Secure Border Net At Risk of Failure, Gov't Audit Says

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's development of its SBInet program needs improvement or risks failure, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation.

SBInet is one element of the DHS Secure Border Initiative (SBI). SBInet is responsible for developing a comprehensive border protection system. According to DHS, the system is to cover 6,000 miles of U.S. border and is designed to:

• Detect an entry when it occurs.
• Identify what the entry is.
• Classify its level of threat (who the entrant is,
  what the entrant is doing, how many, etc.).
• Respond effectively and efficiently to
  the entry, and bring the situation to the
  appropriate law enforcement resolution.

"To its credit, the SBInet contract was generally competed in accordance with federal requirements. However, the SBInet contract does not fully satisfy the federal regulatory requirement to specify a maximum dollar value or the number of units that may be ordered," GAO says in a new report. "We also reported that important management controls provided for in [White House] Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance and best practices were not yet in place, although the program manager stated that he was committed to doing so. Until they are in place, the program is at increased risk of failure."

GAO is the nonpartisan, investigative arm of Congress.

"DHS’s plan to execute SBInet activities through a series of concurrent task orders introduces additional risk. With multiple related and dependent projects being undertaken simultaneously, SBInet is exposed to possible cost and schedule overruns and performance problems," the report says.

"Without assessing this level of concurrency and how it affects project implementation, SBInet runs the risk of not delivering promised capabilities and benefits on time and within budget," the report adds. "SBI and SBInet officials told us that they understand the risks inherent in concurrency and are addressing these risks. However, as of December 2006, they had not provided evidence that identified the dependencies among their concurrent activities and that they were proactively managing the associated risk."


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