04/29/13
Three years ago, Rep. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.) and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) visited the outskirts of Arizona's border with Mexico on a fact-finding mission in the wake of the murder of a rancher there.
While talking to ranchers along the Southwest border after the death of Robert Krentz, the lawmakers found that communications often could be extremely unreliable. When trying to contact the secretary of homeland security, their signal would often drop.
The problem underscores communication challenges facing law enforcement personnel at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Barber noted in a hearing Friday. Those communications problems persist three years later.
The topic of communications capability and interoperability was a recurring area of discussion at the hearing, dedicated to wasteful duplicity and fragmentation among DHS programs.
Much duplication and fragmentation at DHS comes from a lack of centralized governance, experts told the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee. The same problem has slowed DHS progress toward radio interoperability, Anne Richards, an assistant DHS inspector general (IG), testified.
In a report released in November 2012, the DHS IG surveyed DHS radio users and found that only one out of 479 surveyed could access and communicate on a designated common channel for the department. Only 20 percent of radios tested by the IG office were programmed to reach the common channel, Richards said.
Despite an internal goal of radio interoperability among DHS personnel, the department was not reaching its goal because of weak governance for the goal. The IG report at the time recommended DHS centralize authority for achieving interoperability.
But DHS responded that a joint working group, coordinated through memoranda of understanding (MOUs) between DHS components, would effectively provide governance to achieve interoperability.
So the recommendation remains open, Richards said. In total, the DHS IG office has made 8,000 recommendations in the past ten years, with about 15 percent of them remaining open. That 15 percent scales to $650 million program values, economically speaking, she added.
Meanwhile, departmentwide interoperability lags at DHS because radios are not programmed to the common channel and radio operators are unaware of its existence. DHS was working on guidance on the issue, as recommended by the IG office, but rejected centralized governance of the issue. DHS has the authority to strengthen management of the issue, but chooses to work through the MOUs.
"My audit work indicates that collaboration is not at the point where it is going to get them there quickly," Richards said.
The IG office also is examining radio inventory issues at the department, and a draft report is in the works. Richards predicted the IG office would release it within the next quarter.
With that audit, the IG office may reach similar conclusions as it did with a recent audit of DHS detection equipment, Richards' testimony suggested. In that audit, the IG office found that various DHS components did not identify detection equipment such as metal detectors in a common way.
"They had it on their inventories but they all recorded it differently," Richards said. As such, DHS agencies did not have information readily available to assist it in sharing or shifting resources.
The IG office prescribed standard data dictionaries to enable components to define specific equipment with common terms. With those standards, DHS could share information on its radios and perhaps speed its goal of achieving departmentwide interoperability as well as becoming "One DHS," Richards said.
Cathleen Berrick, managing director of homeland security at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), noted generally DHS IT management continues to face high risk, despite a recent high-level review of major IT programs. That review only accounts for about 20 percent of the IT portfolio throughout the department, Berrick said.
Any DHS management challenge requires a roadmap of the root causes of fundamental management problems, Berrick said. From there, DHS must identify gaps and dedicate resources to address those gaps. If faced with limited funding, DHS must prioritize its initiatives.
Moreover, a system of metrics and oversight structure can demonstrate progress in addressing issues, Berrick said. DHS must have sustainable, repeatable plans for tackling management challenges.
DHS has a good strategy and strong metrics for many of these challenges and must now carry out that strategy to fruition, Berrick said.
Henry Willis, director of the Rand Homeland Security and Defense Center, suggested Congress could provide more oversight over some DHS programs by demanding to review analyses of major decisions.
And lawmakers should continue to ensure adequate and sustained funding for analytic capabilities, Willis said, quoting the maxim, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
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