In its first markup of a comprehensive Homeland Security Authorization Bill since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stood up in 2003, a Senate panel yesterday began debate on a bill that aims to provide more consistency and oversight to the process of reviewing investments, eliminates several offices and combines several screening programs into one new office.
In the area of acquisition, the DHS Authorization Act of 2011 (S. 1546) would make permanent the existing Acquisition Review Board (ARB), which is supposed to ensure that acquisition programs meet certain conditions at key milestones, and also create a new Cost Analysis Division that would validate program life-cycle cost estimates and provide independent cost estimates of programs at key milestones.
The Cost Analysis Division would be led by a Director of Cost Analysis who would be the primary adviser to the Homeland Security Secretary and other senior DHS officials on program costs estimates and analyses and would also serve on the ARB.
Amid “too many” poorly executed programs such as the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet), the bill “calls for putting in place a process to more accurately forecast the true cost of such initiatives and this bill includes several improvements in DHS’ acquisition programs, including the promotion of independent verification and validation (IV&V) for major IT (information technology) acquisitions to prevent failed projects,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said during the markup.
Collins said the Cost Analysis Division is modeled on the Defense Department’s “successful” cost assessment and program evaluation office.
The bill also strengthens the ARB process by ensuring better program definition early on and make sure programs meet mission needs, schedule, budget and performance goals, Collins said.
During yesterday’s markup, the committee deferred a vote on an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would eliminate cost-plus contracts in favor of fixed-price contracts at DHS. Citing the SBInet program as an example, McCain said that cost-plus contracts are an “incentive” to get more money from tax payers.
McCain was supported by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who said that these contracts usually lead to low-bids from the winning contractor who later raises costs once contracting officers are “reluctant to bail out of a contract.”
The committee also deferred a vote on the bill until next Wednesday, at the earliest, to finish consideration of 68 amendments are that have been submitted. The committee voted on 12 of the amendments, including a 12 to 5 rejection of one by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that calls for rolling back the DHS appropriations to FY ’07 levels. Collins said that would entail billions of dollars of cuts that would impair progress DHS has made, and likely require laying off thousands of Border Patrol agents whose ranks have grown significantly in the past five years or so to help stem the flow of illegal migrant and drug trafficking along the nation’s land borders.
The bill also tasks the Under Secretary for Management with doing a study on open architecture for department acquisitions to explore ways to improve program performance, increase competition and reduce costs. Earlier this year, the Defense Department directed the military services look more closely at adopting open architecture practices in line with how the Navy has been moving in this direction for several years or more.
Customs and Border Protection is in the process of putting together and acquisition plan for border surveillance program in Arizona that seeks to take advantage of open architecture principles.
The bill also creates a new Office of International Travel Security and Screening that combines the current US-VISIT entry and exit program office, the Visa Waiver Program, and the Screening and Coordination Office, which is within the DHS Policy Office. A new assistant secretary position would be created to head the new office.
The new office would “coordinate activities within the department to identify, interdict, and prevent the travel of terrorists to the United States,” according to the bill.
“Stopping terrorists as they move about the world or country continues to challenge the department and its partner agencies,” Collins said. She mentioned a recent case where two Iraqi refugees who have been associated with Al-Qaeda and were arrested in Kentucky and granted asylum by the U.S. government “points to a troubling gap.”
Hence the consolidation of the three offices into the new Office of International Travel Security and Screening to ensure that “terrorists do not enter our country and we task this one new office…to do more to ensure that all relevant databases are accesses so that we do not let already identified terrorists and criminals into our country.”
The bill also calls for the Homeland Security Secretary to designate a lead official within the department to coordinate efforts to counter homegrown terrorists, particularly “the ideology that gives rise to Islamist terrorism as identified in the 9/11 Commission Report.”
The bill would also eliminate three offices within DHS–the Office of Domestic Preparedness, the Office of Counter-Narcotics Enforcement, and the Office of Cargo Security Policy–because they are either not being used, overlap with functions elsewhere in the department or are having their functions transferred to other offices.
In other action, the bill would eliminate the National Protection and Programs Directorate and replace it with the Infrastructure Protection and Resilience Directorate. It would also elevate the Assistant Secretary for Policy to an under secretary position.
Any DHS authorization bill that is approved by the Senate must still go through the House for approval.