By Calvin Biesecker
The chairman of a House panel that oversees emergency response efforts within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said he is concerned about repeated delays in the development of next-generation bio-detection system as well as a recent move to drop one of the two competitors in the program.
“I and other members are concerned that the timeline for deployment has been repeatedly delayed,” Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications, said of the Generation-3 BioWatch program. “I’m also concerned that the testing phase includes only one type of technology. There had been two viable competitors going through the process and now you’re down to one before you have even gotten to the field and operational testing and evaluation.”
The Office of Health Affairs within DHS is overseeing development of the Gen-3 BioWatch system, which would replace first and second generation systems that are currently deployed to more than 30 major cities and urban areas around the United States.
The current generation of BioWatch systems are basically aerosol collectors that are manually retrieved daily and analyzed by local laboratories for the presence of certain biological threats such as anthrax. The manual retrieval and analysis process is time consuming, with results taking 12 to 36 hours to produce, which means that in the case of an attack less time to warn and treat the public.
Gen-3, on the other, hand is being developed for rapid, automated collection and analysis in a box so that results from sample collections can be obtained in four to six hours and communicated immediately to local health officials, dramatically increasing the time to warn and treat people in the event of a biological attack.
Alexander Garza, assistant secretary for Health Affairs at DHS, said that overall the acquisition strategy for Gen-3 is “very solid” and attributed program delays to the fact that the effort to develop an automated bio-detection system in a box that will be deployed indoors and out is a “tremendous leap” forward in technology.
“This is first in world technology” and nobody else is developing it, Garza said.
Last fall, OHA awarded Northrop Grumman [NOC] a task order to move on to the field testing phase of Gen-3 but didn’t award an operational test and evaluation contract to the other competitor, United Technologies Corp. [UTX], saying its technology wasn’t meeting performance expectations.
Garza said that so far the test and evaluation phase of the program has done what it is supposed to, and that is “make sure that we’re spending tax dollars wisely, that we’re not going to spend money on something that doesn’t work.”
Still, OHA is hedging its bets.
Last month, the DHS agency issued a Request for Information seeking additional sources that could also provide a fully autonomous networked Gen-3 system. At the time, it decided to move ahead only with Northrop Grumman’s system, DHS said that it would still consider opening another path for companies with relatively mature bio-detection technology to pursue Gen-3 opportunities.
DHS is seeking $115 million for BioWatch in FY ’12, including $25 million for operational test and evaluation of Gen-3.
Garza also said that with the new technology being developed, OHA is working with federal, state and local officials in various communities where Gen-3 will be deployed to make sure that concepts of operation are being developed and that the concerns and questions of these officials are being addressed.