By Calvin Biesecker
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate, along with the Transportation Security Administration and Energy Department’s national laboratories, are in the midst of conducting a strategic analysis of airport checkpoints so that it can create a model that they hope will lead to better checkpoint designs in the future, the head of the S&T told sister publication TR2.
The analysis and modeling effort will help DHS develop concepts for checkpoints of the future, said Tara O’Toole, under secretary of S&T at DHS.
“So what we’re going to try and do is model the checkpoint as it exists, with all of its bits and pieces–Behavior Detection Officers, magnetometers, Advanced Imaging Technology, trace, etcetera–and we’re going to try and get that in a model so that we can better understand the gaps, vulnerabilities and opportunities,” she said. “And that allows you to start to play around with ways to optimize checkpoints.”
O’Toole says that the effort will attempt to answer questions such as what happens to security if trusted traveler lanes are opened and passenger in that lane are allowed to keep their shoes on and whether throughput can be increased without sacrificing security.
“So it’s an attempt to bring systems engineering approaches and advanced modeling to bear on the very complicated problem of how you have enough information to feel comfortable letting that person on an airplane,” she said. The new systems engineering approach to designing future checkpoints came in the wake of the failed 2009 Christmas Day underwear bombing attempt. It includes “our recognition that you can’t keep adding more [security] machines for all kinds of reasons” such as passenger convenience, cost and others, O’Toole said. And, she added, DHS also recognized it needed an analytic tool to better determine what is needed at the checkpoints in terms of security.
The DHS effort to take a more strategic approach to analyzing how to optimize checkpoint designs coincides with pressure from stakeholders in the aviation community for a more risk-based approach to aviation security, especially at the checkpoint.
O’Toole became the head of S&T last winter. She recently completed a reorganization of the directorate that included a consolidation of the various functional divisions such as explosives and borders and maritime security under the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA). It also established a new cyber security division within HSARPA.
Having all the research divisions under one umbrella will allow for a more multi-disciplinary approach to S&T’s work and create a more critical mass of intellectual firepower for a particular project,” O’Toole said. “We’re going to have a lot more interdivisional projects than we had in the past.”
O’Toole outlined the reorganization of S&T in a speech last month. Another important change she has made is to pare down the number of projects her organization is doing so that more resources can be directed to each.
As part of this, O’Toole is also putting more emphasis on helping all of the DHS components transition development efforts into products that are fielded.
“Understand that this whole exercise was done with very clear strategic intent and the strategic intent was again, and it’s critical that this be made clear, is to put a real priority within S&T on transitioning products to use,” O’Toole said.
Last month O’Toole also said that that S&T will get behind a few projects that are especially high-priority for component chiefs. The APEX projects “try and get at strategic issues at the components,” she said. The timeframes for them are between 18 and 24 months.
So far two APEX projects are being lined up, one for the Secret Service and the other for Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The APEX project for the Secret Service is sensitive enough that O’Toole declined to provide any color. She said the “secure transit corridor” project for CBP will take a comprehensive approach to how shippers can bring their products into and out of the U.S. between Mexico and Canada by truck or rail car without lengthy delays at the borders and in a way that CBP has high confidence that the shipment poses no threat to U.S. security.
The secure transit corridor project, which is a priority for CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin, includes smart container-type technologies but goes well beyond the technology, which O’Toole said works pretty well, to explore the operational issues that will be involved. The project is similar to the idea that former CBP Commissioner Robert Bonner pursued during the Bush Administration of a “Green Lane” for trusted shippers whose containers would be equipped with security devices that alert authorities if a container has been breached or opened when it shouldn’t have been.
The project will pilot the operational issues involved in using the technology, O’Toole said.
“What do you do if it looks like the truck has stopped in an unauthorized place? Who gets that information? How is it processed? What is the consequent action and so on and so forth?” O’Toole said. This effort will help lead to the development of a “coherent CONOPS…as well as better understand what the information flow and system needs would be and what the life-cycle” and other costs would be, including training and infrastructure, she adds.
O’Toole said the smart corridor project, which will mix technology and information flows with different responses will be an opportunity for HSARPA to bring its new cross- domain capabilities to bear.
Another change within S&T that is being thought through relates to the restructuring of the Integrated Product Teams (IPT) instituted by O’Toole’s predecessor Jay Cohen.
Cohen created the IPTs as a way to bring elements of S&T together with a DHS component or components that have the lead in a certain area such as aviation security. This enabled the components to better transmit their requirements and needs to S&T and to maintain open lines of communication between the research arm of DHS and the agencies it serves.
O’Toole said the IPT concept was a major advance for DHS because it linked S&T’s efforts to the components.
Plans for the IPT restructuring are still underway.