By Calvin Biesecker
The processes and practices that have been used to test an electronic fence system that is being deployed along limited portions of the nation’s southwest border in Arizona have frequently been lacking in quality and in some cases ignored altogether, leading to program delays and have made it difficult to assess the maturity the system, a Government Accountability Official (GAO) said yesterday.
Among the deficiencies highlighted were changes “on the fly” to previously defined test procedures, a lack of “quality assurance checks” over these test changes, and changes in system requirements that test procedures were supposed to examine, Randolph Hite, director of Information Technology Architecture and Systems Issues with GAO, testified at a House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism. In conjunction with the hearing, GAO released a report on the electronic fence program, which is called SBInet.
Moreover, Hite said, “To make matters worse, some of the changes were characterized as being made merely to pass the test case rather than to demonstrate that the system could function as intended. In my view, the volume and the nature of the changes made to test procedures cast doubt on the sufficiency of the testing performed, which, in turn, increases the likelihood that system problems remain undiscovered.”
Still, a review of test data over a 17-month period ending in July 2009 showed that the testing is doing what it’s supposed to do, which is uncover defects,” Hite said. In that period over 1,300 defects with the SBInet were found by the program office, he added.
Unfortunately, the program was discovering problems faster than it could close them, Hite said.
“The result is a trend in the number of unresolved defects that is not indicative of a maturing system,” Hite said.
The Department of Homeland Security largely concurred with GAO’s recommendations, which Hite said is a good thing.
Mark Borkowski, the executive director of the Secure Border Initiative Program Executive Office, which oversees SBInet for Customs and Border Protection, acknowledged that the program originally didn’t have good management practices in place and that it has been difficult to establish these while the project has to keep moving forward. However, he pointed out that the data that GAO analysis for its latest report on the program is nearly a year old and that things have changed since then.
“So the point I’m trying to make is I think we’re on it,” Borkowski said. “The other thing is between then and now we have focused on a lot of the things that GAO also identified. We saw the same things. So that is a work in progress.”
SBInet is being developed and deployed by Boeing [BA], which won a contract over four years ago for the system. Extensive portions of the system were already supposed to be operational along the southwest border but poor program management and a lack of rigorous system integration testing initially led to delays. While the program has made progress in the past two years, various technical glitches have continued to plague SBInet, which recently led to further delays and high-level reassessment of the effort by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (Defense Daily, Jan. 22).
The reassessment is ongoing and DHS hasn’t said when it will conclude, although an early result was a decision announced this week by Napolitano to transfer $50 million in Recovery Act funds that had been slated for SBInet for technologies that can be purchased and deployed quickly to help the Border Patrol better secure the southwest border (Defense Daily, March 18). Napolitano also froze program funds beyond the first two increments of SBInet Block I, which are called Tucson-1 and Ajo-1.
Both increments combined will provide electronic surveillance over about 50 miles of Arizona’s border with Mexico through the use of cameras, radars, related communications equipment installed on fixed towers in the border region. If all of Block I is built, it would cover Arizona’s entire border with Mexico.
The Tucson-1 increment has been constructed and on Feb. 6 the program office turned it over to the Border Patrol for nighttime operations. The most recent plans had called for the Border Patrol to receive Tucson-1 last December to begin several months of operational testing, but the continued technical glitches delayed this. Now Tucson-1 is scheduled to begin operational testing in mid-September, Borkowski said.
Nonetheless, the ongoing use of SBInet in the Tucson area has already shown the potential of the system, Michael Fisher, acting chief of the Border Patrol for CBP, told the panel.
Fisher said he hasn’t been in the Tucson command center yet but has seen video of operations, which he said produced a clear picture of events as they unfold. Video quality has been an issue in previous tests.
“But what really impressed me from an operator’s perspective was the sense of how protected the Border Patrol agents in the field are going to be because of this,” Fisher said. Agents in the command center viewing the sensor displays have the situational awareness to allow the field agents to know in advance and in real time what is happening, where different groups of smugglers are, and can move those agents into position and even call for backup if necessary, he said.
This is “oversight that historically we just didn’t have in the Border Patrol before” with previous systems, Fisher said.
Fisher said he’ll withhold final judgment on the performance of SBInet until operational testing is done and he pointed out that the technology isn’t a “silver bullet.” Nonetheless, “It does look promising,” he said.
Another good sign from the month-old early user evaluation is that the SBInet system hasn’t crashed, which had also been a problem in earlier testing, Borkowski said. He said this is more evidence of the improvements in the test and resolution process made within the program.
Construction of the sensor and communications towers for Ajo-1 is underway although environmental concerns, as well as a two-month shutdown this spring and summer due to the antelope fawning season, are contributing to delays there, Borkowski said. Construction should be completed by mid-August at which time CBP will conduct System Acceptance Testing, which will last into November, he added. Then it will be turned over to the Border Patrol.
So far CBP has obligated over $800 million on SBInet, including $615 million for Boeing. The $50 million in Recovery Act funds that are being diverted away from SBInet will be spent on equipment such as mobile surveillance towers, remote video systems, night vision trucks, aircraft sensors, radars to detect low flying aircraft, cameras and laptop computers for pursuit vehicles, and equipment for southbound operations based on the priorities of the Border Patrol, CBP Air and Marine Office and agency intelligence officials, Borkowski said.
Two members of the subcommittee, Chairman Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), suggested that CBP consider additional unmanned aerial vehicles to help secure the border.