Not wanting to be tied into any single companies’ solution and desiring to be able to quickly deploy and upgrade systems while at the same time keep life-cycle costs down, a new office in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is stressing open standards, modularity and non-proprietary solutions based on commercial investments, an agency official says.
CBP was created after 9/11 out of a number of different agencies that had little technical integration between them, and carries out a combination of operations using very basic means to highly technical systems in areas ranging from ports of entry to remote mountains and valleys in adverse conditions against hostile threats, all if which drives two main focus areas within acquisition: connectivity and open architecture, says Marty Meyer, director of the Requirements and Architectures Division within the recently established Office of Technology Innovation and Acquisition at CBP.
Better connectivity is needed because in the remote areas, which include dessert environments, there is no infrastructure and in some places satellite communications don’t work, Meyer says at the annual Open Architecture Summit last Thursday hosted by our sister publication Defense Daily.
Connectivity
“Connectivity. Bandwidth. The ability to just connect is a huge challenge for us,” Meyer says.
As for open architecture and standards, they are “a big challenge for us” but will help connect the disparate systems that CBP has, Meyer says.
The Office of Technology Integration and Acquisition was created over the summer to help the agency better focus its acquisition plans and programs and ensure they are synched with CBP’s missions.
The goal is “More capability to the agents and officers in the field,” Meyer says. “That is the point of the exercise. It’s all about the mission.”
The new office is headed by Assistant Commissioner Mark Borkowski, who previously managed the agency’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI) Program Executive Office, and who also serves as CBP’s Component Acquisition Executive, ensuring the accountability of all acquisition efforts.
Meyer says that “cutting edge technology” is important for CBP to help get “inside the turning circle of the threat coming across the border.” However, that threat, such as drug cartels, is well financed, smart and agile so “you can’t become bogged down in presenting a technical solution that takes two years, three years” to field,” he says.
Open architecture and non-proprietary solutions mean that systems have modularity, allowing for components and systems from different vendors to be easily switched out without new development costs and time consuming delays, Meyer says. It also means that companies have to provide data disclosure to CBP, he says.
Data disclosure means that “We want to see the interface standards, and maybe not the data standard, that people can come and go with,” Meyer says. “We are not pushing for any particular data standard. What were saying is, ‘Industry, we’re going to pick a standard or set of standards as appropriate and we’re going to try it. We fully expect you to adhere to that. Now below that level of interface standard you can keep things as proprietary as you want…Above that we expect things to play together.'”
Meyer says that “We cannot afford to be locked into one big company, or small company or medium size company that offers only at the end of the day a proprietary set that we have to become accustomed to. We can’t afford to do that because of this wide disparity in technology, means, methods that we have to bring into the fight.”
The creation of the Technology Innovation and Acquisition office and the message that Meyer gave conference attendees come amid an ongoing review of CBP’s troubled electronic border security fence program, called SBInet. A decision from the Department of Homeland Security on the future direction of the program or even its potential cancellation is expected in December.
Boeing [BA] is developing and integrating SBInet, which consists of a security management software system called a common operating picture (COP) that is being tested at two Border Patrol stations in Arizona that integrates camera, radar and communications feeds from fixed tower positions along about 53 miles of border with Mexico. The project has been delayed a number of times due largely to technical issues, some of them dealing with integration challenges with the radar and cameras that were expected to easily plug-and-play with the COP.
Those delays have raised the ire of Congress and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Boeing’s contract expired at the end of September but has been extended twice, with the latest extension coming last week and running through mid-December.
“We are not interested in one goliath that provides all of our future systems because we know we’re going to get locked into something that we just can’t afford,” Meyer says.
Plug-and-Play
Going forward, CBP wants to be crystal clear about what it means by plug-and-play.
“You say your stuff works. Okay, let’s see,” Meyer says. “We’re going to bring it out there and plug it in. Just like a USB port.”
That also means “no development,” he says. The agency wants to take advantage of systems that have already been developed commercially and can be acquired off-the-shelf.
“We’re interested in enjoying the standards, bringing you into the fight with those standards and seeing if your stuff works, “Meyer adds. “You say you’ve got open architecture systems. Okay, let’s go find out. We’re very interested in that.”
To that end, Borkowski’s office plans to do small scale demonstrations of systems and technology to find out if a particular vendor’s advertising lives up to its billing in the field.
“We want to see,” Meyer says. “Prove it.”
If not, the office will give other systems or technology a try, he says. “But we can’t afford spending a lot of time developing things, working the integration. It’s got to be based on those open standards.”