The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) plan to roll out a third party testing regime this year to help ensure that security equipment being offered by various vendors is mature enough to enter the agency’s formal test process may not solve any issues and instead may lead to higher costs and delays, says an industry official.
TSA’s current test and evaluation processes already take “too long and unnecessarily wastes millions of dollars of government and industry,” T.J. Shulz, director of the Security Manufacturers Coalition (SMC) tells the House Homeland Security Transportation Security Subcommittee. He says the current process “inhibits competition.”
TSA, working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is developing a plan to allow third parties to become part of the test and evaluation process for screening technologies used at airports. The plan is to roll out the Third Party Test Program throughout 2016 and have it implemented by year-end, Jill Vaughan, assistant administrator at TSA’s Office of Security Capabilities, says at the panel’s hearing examining challenges in the agency’s acquisition process.
TSA will host an Industry Day in February to further discuss the third party testing program, which Vaughan says will “greatly increase the level of transparency so manufacturers and industry can better understand how mature their product is before they enter in our formal testing process.” She says the upcoming Industry Day will allow TSA to “socialize” its plans with companies and obtain feedback, adding that the third party testing will streamline and speed up the test and evaluation process.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Dec. 2015 cautioned that TSA had yet to finalize important parts of its third party testing plan, including not knowing how many testers might be able provide services, which if not enough could lead to higher costs. GAO said TSA believes that the program will result in less retesting having to be done but also cited agency officials as saying there are no guarantees that the acquisition process will be shortened.
Shulz says the SMC, which represents a number of companies in the security detection space, endorses GAO’s findings. He cautions that it’s not known if TSA will accept the findings of third party testers and asks Congress to monitor the program and provide the “resources TSA needs to set up and support a workable system.”
Shulz says that the “greatest opportunity for improvement in the acquisition process lies in fixing current test and evaluation process.”
The Department of Homeland Security is currently responsible for all aspects of testing of transportation security technologies.
Industry Concerns with Open Architecture Plans
Vaughan in December and again this month says her office is working on an overall systems architecture aimed at increasing interoperability and commonality among detection technologies at the checkpoint so that the various technologies can “talk together.” She says that this “open architecture” and “system of systems” approach would enhance competition by enabling third parties, including more small businesses, to have a chance to compete to have their technologies included as part of screening systems, and create a more flexible and adaptable approach to enable these systems to evolve to meet changing threats.
Shulz says that as TSA moves ahead with its systems architecture that industry needs to be “closely involved” because companies have “spent tens of millions of dollars” in research and develop to create better technologies. Standardizing the security equipment “could indeed stifle innovation,” he says.
That innovation can be seen in how screening systems supplied by different manufacturers differ from one another, such as how many detectors each company includes in their X-Ray systems and how they might position those detectors. Security equipment manufacturers are concerned about losing their proprietary data related to their respective systems.
Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), chairman of the subcommittee, speaking at the outset of the hearing says he is “unconvinced that TSA and the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate are working closely enough to develop and test existing future technology. “A lack of cross-pollination and communication between these entities is, I believe, hindering their ability to meet mission needs.”
The hearing also examined legislation signed into law a year ago reforming TSA’s acquisition processes, including the creation of a Five-Year technology investment plan that the agency completed last summer. Katko and Shulz both say the plan is a good first step although the industry official says security manufacturers need “a more precise roadmap to know where and when to invest.”
The Strategic Five-Year Investment Plan for Aviation Security does lay out general plans for equipment recapitalization, for example saying how many Advanced Technology X-Ray systems the agency plans to buy each year through FY ’20. But Shulz says the plan needs more details on the agency’s plans for investing in “new innovative technology” in addition to the recapitalization of existing systems.