The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to review proposals from companies hoping to deliver a new-generation of bio-detection capabilities under the BioWatch program and expects now to award one or more contracts this month for additional development and field testing, a DHS official told sister publication TR2.
The contracts will be for the Gen-3 portion of BioWatch and will permit DHS’ Office of Health Affairs to conduct component, subsystem and system level testing.
DHS had hoped to make awards this month at the latest but decided that given the complexities of the Gen-3 systems warranted further discussions with the hopeful suppliers.
“We needed to have further discussions with industry to make sure that it’s clear to them what we’re asking and it’s also clear to us what they’re able to provide so we can make the best decision for the government,” the official said.
Under Gen-3 companies–some with and some without development funds from the DHS Science and Technology (S&T) branch–have been developing systems that are basically a laboratory in a box, which means they can continuously sample the air around them and then automatically test the sample for the presence of certain deadly pathogens and communicate the result to authorities. The currently deployed versions of BioWatch, Gen-1 and Gen-2, continuously sample the environment but require manual retrieval of the sample for laboratory analysis to determine the presence of a potential threat, a process that can take a day or more.
Testing and evaluating these “autonomous lab-in-a-box” systems have never occurred before, the official said.
As part of the Gen-3 bid process, firms have already demonstrated their respective systems to OHA at the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center. Once any Phase 1 contracts are awarded, OHA and the firms within a couple of months begin testing the core detection technology of each system, the assays. These will be run against the different samples for the agents DHS wants to monitor to make sure they perform at the appropriate specification level.
OHA will be looking for a high level of sensitivity. OHA wants a very low false negative rate, meaning the assays will detect the presence of an agent and not miss it, and also a very low false positive rate, which means the system will not trigger an alarm when an agent isn’t present, he said.
Along the test path, a group within the Air Force with expertise in chemical and biological testing called the National Assessment Group will be doing independent technical assessments that will add a level of integrity to the test and evaluation process.
The next series of testing in Phase 1 will involve live agents at the subsystem and system level at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground.
In the last set of tests in Phase 1 OHA will deploy and operate units in Chicago to measure their performance in a live environment and to work on the concept of operations at the state and local level with the appropriate public health and other authorities and officials, the official said. The original plan was for this series of testing to occur in two cities but OHA felt it would be a greater burden on the program and wasn’t necessary to get the necessary level of data, he said.
The need to work out the CONOPS with state and local officials highlights a key aspect of BioWatch, which involves a tremendous level of collaboration and coordination at various levels of government. In addition to partnering at the state and local level, OHA is working with DHS S&T, the Defense Department, and other partners on Gen-3. That extensive coordination, combined with the cutting-edge technology being developed for Gen-3, are key reasons why the program is already 18 months to two years behind schedule and likely to slip further.
The goal in the Phase 1 tests is to be ready to deploy the systems in Chicago in the late spring or early summer for five to six months of use. Once that series of tests is completed, DHS will “make the decision [whether] have these technologies met the requirements that we’ve laid out, do they work effectively, are they reliable, and does a typical end user like Chicago feel comfortable with them,” the official said.
So once the Phase 1 testing ends in late 2010, and that’s if the current schedule holds, OHA with the aid of its various partners will decide whether to enter Phase 2. That phase would involve a much wider deployment–between 200 and 500 systems–across four cities, and include the communications networking of the Gen-3 machines, which is another key feature of the program.
That deployment will be considered the Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) phase of the program and is currently scheduled for 2012. Not all of the details for OT&E have been laid out and will depend too on the outcome of the initial Phase 1 testing, the official said.
However, congressional appropriators in their final report accompanying the FY ’10 Homeland Security Bill want research and development on the Gen-3 systems to be completed during FY ’10 to allow for operational deployment beginning in FY ’11. While it would seem that OHA’s current plan is a year behind congressional expectations, the DHS official said that further discussions between OHA and the appropriators will occur to understand their definition of an operational deployment. He said that OHA’s Gen-3 timelines were provided to Congress over the summer.
Congress is providing $89.5 million for BioWatch in FY ’10, permitting continued operation of the Gen-1 and Gen-2 systems and the start up of testing for Gen-3. The conference report excluded a requirement that DHS S&T take over the test program for Gen-3, a prospect that likely would have created further program delays, but does want S&T intimately involved with the testing. That has been the plan all along, the DHS official said.
The appropriators affirmed their support for the Gen-3 program “but remain concerned that the plans for this security imperative are adrift,” according to the report language.