Thread: GAO report questions feds’ plan for Arizona border technol

GAO report questions feds’ plan for Arizona border technology

Friday, Nov. 4
By Uriel J. Garcia
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – U.S. Customs and Border Protection needs to do a better job of justifying its plans for $1.5 billion border surveillance project at the Arizona-Mexico border, according to a government report released Friday.

The Government Accountability Office said immigration officials should further analyze the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology plan to justify the cost of the program, which is supposed to replace the now-abandoned Strategic Border Initiative, or SBInet.

The report said that without a full analysis of the new program and more accurate estimates of the costs, the plan might fail in its objective to secure the border.

“Without documentation of the analysis, there is no way to verify the process CBP (Customs and Border Protection) followed, identify how the underlying analyses were used, assess the validity of the decisions made, or justify the funding requested for the plan,â€

Virtual wall to be launched in AZ hasn't been justified, GAO says

Border-security plan not justified, GAO says
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Brady McCombs Arizona Daily Star
Posted: Saturday, November 5, 2011 12:00 am

The federal government's latest high-tech border security strategy is already being questioned by the investigative arm of Congress.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection hasn't done sufficient homework to justify a plan that went into effect earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office reported Friday.

Agency officials have not adequately explained how they determined that strategy is better than other alternatives, the report found.

Instead of the one-size-fits-all network of camera and radar towers used in the previous program, SBInet, the new strategy tailors unique plans for different stretches of the geographically diverse, 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

Most of the options are already being used on the border: truck-mounted surveillance systems, night-vision goggles and towers with day and night cameras. But now they are being brought together more cohesively in a plan to be rolled out first in Arizona - the busiest stretch of border for the last decade.

"Without documentation of the analysis, there is no way to verify the process CBP followed, identify how the underlying analysis were used, assess the validity of the decisions made, or justify the funding requested for the plan," the GAO report says. "CBP officials also have not yet defined the mission benefits expected."

The report follows a series of scathing evaluations issued by the GAO about the SBInet program, which was plagued by delays and glitches and produced only two working systems covering 53 miles in Arizona despite a cost of about $1 billion from 2005 to 2011.

The GAO questioned whether SBInet was a prudent use of resources. In January, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano canceled the program.

Before SBInet, Homeland Security and its precursors spent $429 million from 1998 to 2005 on border surveillance systems that were set off by the movement of animals, trains and wind, the department's office of inspector general said in 2005.

Homeland Security, in its written response to the report, further explained how and why it had carried out the project so far. It also said it concurred with most of the recommendations made by the GAO for improving the program.

The new plan, called the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan, is expected to cost an estimated $750 million to blanket Arizona's 378 miles of border with technology over the next three to four years, officials said. The fiscal year 2012 budget includes $242 million for the Arizona plan, the GAO report shows.

The GAO found that Custom and Border Protection's 10-year life-cycle cost estimate for the plan of $1.5 billion is comprehensive but does not include several best practices that would make it more reliable.

"It will be difficult for CBP to provide reasonable assurance that its cost estimate is reliable and that its budget request for fiscal year 2012 and beyond is realistic," the GAO wrote.

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