Fixing failed SBInet: Contract delays, quality issues at CBP

One specific program bogged down in delays and management problems is IFT, the most expensive of the five surveillance systems at $145,000,000. OTIA issued an RFP for the IFT program on April 6, 2012. OTIA specifically called for a, “…fixed-priced contract to a firm to provide a non-developmental (ideally commercial) sensor system that provides long range persistent surveillance to enable the detection, tracking, identification, and classification of items of interest in rural and remote areas along the nation’s borders.” Most importantly, “Proposals were to be evaluated on a best-value basis considering price and five non-price factors: operational utility, system maturity and deployment capability, technical, management, and past performance.”

Even before Borkowski’s OTIA picked a contractor for IFT, however, the GAO heavily criticized the IFT contract-along with the RVSS program and the MSC program- because goals and objectives required for all three of these surveillance programs were most often either “partially met” or “minimally met” (Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan: Additional Actions Needed to Strengthen Management and Assess Effectiveness, 4 March 2014, GAO-14-411T).) In specific, according to the GAO, CBP also failed to, “…complete documents for acquisition decisions consistent with the guidance….” provided by a previous GAO study. This included a reasonable testing of the, “…operational effectiveness and suitability of the system…” in more than one border location. At the same time, the GAO states that the CBP, “…has identified mission benefits, but does not capture complete data on the contributions of its surveillance technologies” (Robert Lee Maril, “How many times does CBP’s Mark Borkowski get to fail,” HSNW, 28 September 2015)).

Twenty-two months after the RFP for the IFT was published, on 26 February 2014, OTIA finally selected Elbit Forth Worth (EFW) from a total of fourteen contract bids. EFW is an American subsidiary of Elbit Systems, an international corporation based in Israel.

Under federal contract standards and procedures, any corporations bidding for the IFT contract that believed CBP’s OTIA failed to follow its own agency policies in awarding contracts could protest the awarding of the IFT contract to EFW. Raytheon, one of the fourteen bidders for IFT, in fact soon did protest the awarding of the contract to EFW (Bid Protest Regulations, U.S. Government Accountability Office ).

The GAO subsequently reviewed Raytheon’s protest filings and summarily issued a judgment on 9 July 2014, upholding Raytheon’s protest that the IFT contract unfairly was awarded to EFW by Borkowksi’s OTIA.

The GAO decision states-a redacted version was made available to the public-that, “Raytheon challenges the agency’s evaluation of proposals under the operational utility, technical and past performance factors, as well as its best-value trade off decision” (Decision, Matter of: Raytheon, 7/9/14, United States Government Accountability Office,). Further, the GAO decision states that, “Raytheon first agues that DHS unreasonably viewed as a unique strength and discriminator EFW’s infrared camera feature. In a related argument, Raytheon argues that DHS engaged in unequal treatment in counting this feature as a strength for EFW under both the operational utility and the technical factors, while assigning Raytheon a strength for its high-resolution camera only under the technical factor. Raytheon also challenges as unreasonable the agency’s consideration of EFW’s video-motion-detection-while-scanning feature, and its clutter reduction, as discriminators in EFW’s favor. Finally, Raytheon argues that the agency improperly attributed the past performance of an affiliated company to EFW.”

For all these reasons, GAO concludes in its detailed consideration of Raytheon’s protest over the awarding of the bid to EFW, “…we sustain the protest.”

According to GAO’s Bid Protest Regulations, upon GAO’s ruling in favor of Raytheon’s, OTIA should: “1. Refrain from exercising options under the contract (or); 2. Terminate the contract (or); 3.Recompete the contract (or); 4. Issue a new solicitation (or); 5. Award a contract consistent with statute and regulation (or); 6. Such other recommendation(s) as GAO determines necessary to promote compliance.” GAO also recommends, according to these same suggested remedies, that OTIA consider paying Raytheon all legal fees, consultant fees, costs of filing, and costs of preparing the bid for IFT. These costs could conceivably run to several millions of dollars or more.

EFW was not funded by CBP to build the IFT from the time of the Raytheon protest, April of 2014, to the time of the GAO decision supporting Raytheon in early July 2014.

However, CBP funding to EFW resumed in August, 2015, in spite of the GAO decision in favor of Raytheon’s protest. To date DHS has now awarded EFW Fixed Integrated Towers Program $47,767,703.11 (DHS Customs and Border Protection $47.7m EFW Inc., GovTribe).

Since Raytheon publically has not pursued some kind of settlement for costs accrued in preparing its IFT proposal to OTIA and, at the same time, CBP funds have resumed to EFW as of August 2015, it can reasonably be assumed Raytheon privately reached a financial settlement with OTIA. Raytheon did not respond to a request for an interview.

To date EFW has completed seven communication towers near Nogales, Arizona (Sylvia Longmire, DHS Claims Success with Fifth Attempt to Virtually Secure the Border, In Homeland Security, 30 December 2015). In Arizona the IFT is known as the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan. By 2020 EFW is supposed to have erected fifty-two towers in Arizona.

At the very least the failure of Borkowski’s OTIA to follow federal standards and procedures in awarding the IFT contract to a corporation based solely upon the merit of its proposal has delayed the IFT program. In addition, OTIA took twenty-two months from the time it announced the RFP until it decided to award to contract to EFW. Not only has the IFT program been substantially delayed, but also an unknown amount of taxpayer dollars likely have been spent by OTIA in settling the Raytheon protest involving the GAO decision against OTIA.

This time lost, when added to the long list of failed surveillance systems along the Mexican border, continues to leave U.S. Border Patrol agents without existing state-of-the-art technology from which other countries have benefited for many years.

The needlessly delayed IFT project has once again placed Border Patrol agents in harms way because the men and women who risk their lives patrolling the line still do not possess sophisticated surveillance technology to fight the drug cartels, human traffickers, and potential terrorists crossing our international borders. At the same time, the GAO’s decision that Borkowski’s OTIA should not have awarded the IFT contract to EFW in the first place has, in all likelihood, wasted millions of taxpayer dollars in a settlement to Raytheon. Finally, the nature of the GAO decision supporting Raytheon’s protest seriously calls into question the quality of EFW’s surveillance towers constructed in Arizona.

Robert Lee Maril is the author ofThe Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.–Mexico Border. He blogs at leemaril.com.