Auditor faults SBInet's successor
listening to such feedback. At Tuesday’s hearing, Mark Borkowski, assistant commissioner of the CBP Office of Technology, Innovation and Acquisition, said the bureau is procuring suitable sensor equipment through an Army contract vehicle. McCaul praised that decision.
Still, the federal watchdog’s work has raised questions regarding the chosen technology mix. “We have not been given access to documents,” Stana told lawmakers, underscoring the lack of justification for decisions made as the “key shortcoming in our ability to analyze for you what this technology deployment really means.”
He noted this is the fourth attempt at securing the border with monitoring devices. “This time, we ought to get it right with proper planning and proper judgments exercised,” Stana said.
DHS officials disagreed with GAO’s observation that the department’s analysis of the new plan does not substantiate its cost-effectiveness, according to Stana’s written testimony.
The Office of Management and Budget in 2009 launched the so-called IT Dashboard Web site to track the budget, scheduling and performance of major IT projects. Tuesday’s audit, however, found the ratings of a sample of investments, including several DHS initiatives, did not always accurately reflect the current status of projects.
Leaders of the Senate committee on Tuesday urged DHS and the other agencies to strengthen their reporting on IT contracts.
“Agencies must do a better job of supplying OMB with correct data, and OMB needs to improve its calculations and rating systems,” Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said in a statement. “If the IT Dashboard works the way it was intended, the federal government could see billions of dollars in savings and a significant reduction in waste.”
Ranking Republican Susan Collins of Maine added: “Government agencies must be vigilant in requiring that IT projects are properly planned and that clear requirements are established at the beginning of the program… . We have already seen hundreds of millions of dollars wasted by the federal government due to poorly planned and poorly managed IT projects.”
This is the second time GAO has criticized the validity of the scores on the IT Dashboard, having issued a similar audit last July.
OMB officials objected to the methodology of Tuesday’s study, which relied on earned value management numbers — a comparison between planned performance and actual progress. OMB officials said such data vary significantly across agencies.
