GAO hammers TWIC program management

More trouble for the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC, or, as we like to say, TWIT) program. We reported a few months ago about concerns that the finger biometric scanners involved would not stand up to the harsh maritime environment — a critical flaw considering that one of the main purposes of the program is to secure port facilities. Now the Government Accountability Office, after evaluating a series of tests, has issued its own critical report of TWIC deployment processes. Among the problems cited were an inability to quickly enroll transportation workers, ongoing problems with reader reliability, and the failure to correctly balance the security value of the program against its economic and infrastructural impact. “The program has been plagued by cost overruns and missed deadlines,” Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) said in response to the report. “I continue to be troubled by the lack of a comprehensive management plan — a plan that is more than a year overdue to Congress”

It is no surprise that the program is struggling. Such has been the case with many other similar programs, and with 750,000 eligible transportation workers spread across 3,500 facilities and 10,800 vessels, it would be impossible to overstate the project’s magnitude. Indeed, the total cost is expected to reach $1.1-2 billion. Yet TSA seems overwhelmed and, at times, completely unaware of its own efforts. According to GAO, although the agency could tell GAO researchers the total number of cards issued and in use, it could not tell them how many were biometric. In another oversight blunder, a contractor installed six biometric card readers, none of which have been used because TSA failed to install the appropriate electrical connections. Even when trying to solve problems, TSA has not performed as it should. In August the agency promised to develop new rules to take into account the concerns about maritime effectiveness, yet according to GAO, TSA could not provide any information about the initiative, making it entirely unclear when the problem will be resolved in a manner that will allow contractors to continue.

These are just a few of the problems highlighted in the GAO report. To list them all here would take up an entire page, and readers can refer to the document itself for more detail. Suffice it to say, however, TWIC is a critical program, and the fact that DHS and TSA have not been able to implement it properly is a strike against those agencies and a harsh blow to homeland security efforts as a whole. If we had our way, we would start all over. As that is impossible, the only response is to pray.

-read more in Chris Strohm’s GovExec report; read the GAO report