Waxman goes after Booz Allen for SBInet conflict of interest
The consulting firm holds a contract to manage the SBInet program, but it also works as a subcontractor to Boeing in other projects; as Boeing is constructing the border system, Waxman worries about oversight
Uh oh. Representative Henry Waxman (D-California), the newly-installed Democratic chairman of the the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has turned a stern eye on Booz Allen. Readers may know that the consulting firm holds a contract with DHS to manage the SBInet border security program, and readers surely know that Boeing recently won the $2.1 billion contract to install it. (That number, however, has been said to be a gross underestimate.)
No problem, except that Waxman has discovered that Booz Allen is a subcontractor to Boeing in a number of other projects. Booz Allen, Waxman says, “appears to have significant conflicts of interest.” Among the questionable arrangements involves a contract to conduct a modeling and simulation capabilities for a $4 million Boeing project for the Air Force Multi-Sensor Command and Control Aircraft program. The fear, of course, is that Booz Allen will be less than diligent in ensuring that all the spending is on the up and up. From Booz Allen’s perspective, however, Waxman’s interest in the issue can only mean trouble. In 2005 the company received $97 million in DHS contracts, more than twice as much as rival Mitre, which received only $47 million. No doubt many of these would suffer from such scrutiny as Waxman seems prepared to provide.
-read more in Alice Lipowicz’s Washington Technology report
