The Department of Homeland Security is doing a poor job of overse...
The Department of Homeland Security is doing a poor job of overseeing establishment of a new information-sharing system to be used worldwide by any entity partnering with DHS, the Government Accountability Office said Wednesday. The Next Generation Homeland Security…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Information Network, now being developed, should be in place and running in September 2009, but DHS lacks proper acquisition management controls to do that, GAO said. Proceeding without such controls, as DHS has, puts the system at risk for failure, GAO said. “In our view, engaging a contractor and commencing work before implementing mature controls is not a recipe for success,” the report said, and without those controls, “the project will be at increased risk of operating in an ad hoc and chaotic manner -- potentially resulting in increased project costs, delayed schedules, and performance shortfalls.” An existing DHS-run information sharing system provides federal, state, local, tribal, private and international partners access to sensitive, unclassified information, as well as chat and instant messaging tools, a document library and interest-specific news articles, links and contact information. That system has drawn criticism for its effectiveness, and HSIN Next Gen is supposed to replace it. GAO did the study in response to a request from Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.