By Calvin Biesecker

For all the changes it made in its program management structure, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) electronic border security fence called SBInet continues to struggle, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) official said yesterday.

Despite the new program leadership, which was added 18 months ago, SBInet has “struggled to right itself,” Randolph Hite, director of Information Technology Architecture and System Issues at GAO, told a House Homeland Security panel.

Hite listed a host of problems with the program that have been mentioned before although a new GAO report on SBInet released yesterday says that CBP continues to ease the requirements for the electronic fence technology. For example, he says “that system performance is now deemed acceptable if it identifies less than 50 percent of items of interest that cross the border.”

These changes in performance expectations are due to limitations in the commercial technology being used and because requirements were poorly defined from the start, Hite cites SBInet program officials as saying.

Hite also says that the Department of Homeland Security won’t be able to measure the benefits it expects to get from deploying SBInet until after the initial increments are deployed in two areas of Arizona called Tucson-1 and Ajo-1. Requirements definition and program management have also fallen short, he says.

Moreover, program milestones continue to be delayed and there is no confidence that these slips won’t continue to happen, Hite tells the Subcommittees on Oversight and Investigations and Border Security.

The panels last heard testimony on the program in March and much of what Hite testified about yesterday was the same. Still, committee members remain frustrated with the program, which was already supposed to be deploying along vast stretches of the nation’s southwest border so that Border Patrol agents would have enhanced situational awareness through the use of cameras and radars tied into sector command centers through a common operating picture.

Mark Borkowski, the CBP executive overseeing SBInet, acknowledged once again that the program has struggled and still has issues but said that the current timelines for Tucson- 1 and Ajo-1 for testing this year are holding. Those new timelines, which represent further delays in the program, were established earlier this year.

System Acceptance Testing for Tucson-1 is expected to occur this September and for Ajo-1 in November, Borkowski said. However, in its report, GAO says that CBP still hasn’t accepted these dates. Hite says the report was delivered to Congress on May 5 although it wasn’t publicly released until yesterday.

SBInet is being integrated and deployed for CBP by Boeing [BA]. Roger Krone, president of Boeing’s Network and Space Systems segment, said that the system currently is showing good performance and excellent progress on all milestones.

In January, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano froze further deployments of SBInet beyond Tucson-1 and Ajo-1, which together account for about 53 miles of border, until after a program review comparing it to other technology options is completed. Borkowski said that review is ongoing but that by the end of June he expects a scientific analysis to be complete on how SBInet compares to the other technology options.

The other options include use of more unmanned aerial vehicles, mobile surveillance systems, and other aircraft.

A clearer way forward for the technologies to be deployed on the southwest border won’t be known until this fall. That’s because the review of technology options has to be integrated with an ongoing strategy review by the Border Patrol that is looking at the right mix of agents, technology and infrastructure needed to better secure the southwest border, Borkowski and Michael Fisher, the acting chief of the Border Patrol, said.

Borkowski doesn’t know what the program review will ultimately recommend but he did offer that he doesn’t expect it to result in a continuation of just deploying SBInet technologies–that is, fixed towers mounted with cameras and radars–given the problems with the technology so far. The system could be deployed in parts, he said.