Border securityGAO faults DHS, Boeing for SBInet problems
GAO says that DHS failed adequately to oversee Boeing Co.’s work on SBInet — a troubled high-tech border security system; GAO said that DHS had not properly monitored Boeing’s progress in meeting deadlines and that some “essential controls” had never been implemented
The Department of Homeland Security has failed adequately to oversee Boeing Co.’s work on a troubled high-tech border security system, a government report released Monday said.
Boeing is the prime contractor working on the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet), an ambitious, multibillion-dollar project to outfit the Southwest border fence with high-tech radar, cameras and satellite signals. The project, begun in 2005, has been plagued with serious system failures and repeated delays.
Scott J. Wilson writes in the Los Angeles Times that Monday’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said that DHS had not properly monitored Boeing’s progress in meeting deadlines and that some “essential controls” had never been implemented. These failures, the GAO said, have been “a major contributor to the SBInet program’s well-chronicled history of not delivering promised system capabilities on time and on budget.”
In a response, DHS called some of the GAO’s assertions “inaccurate” but agreed that its management of the project could be improved.
The GAO faulted Boeing as well, saying the company provided project information to DHS that was “replete with unexplained anomalies, thus rendering the data unfit for effective contractor management and oversight.”
Boeing responded Monday by saying the company had made “significant progress” working with Homeland Security. “We have held to a schedule baseline over the past nine months that has resulted in capabilities that are in the hands of Border Patrol agents right now,” Boeing said.
The GAO urged DHS to schedule regular and thorough reviews of Boeing’s work and to establish performance measures for each part of the border security project.
