Under new management: DHS leaders inherit litany of procurement woes.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: ANALYSIS - Department of Homeland Security

There is a new administration and a new Congress. But will it be a new day for the way the Department of Homeland Security acquires technology?

The past five years has seen a predictable pattern.

Congress passes a law demanding that a perceived security hole be plugged. DHS is given a mandate and a deadline to accomplish the task. More often than not, the implementation of the law requires new technology. The department sets about procuring the technological fixes for the possible security problem, but misses deadlines, and on a few occasions, buys something that just doesn't work.

The Government Accountability Office issues a scathing report. DHS officials are called into congressional hearings to answer questions.

Some $15 billion has been wasted on DHS technology that failed, according to Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

But no one is calling lawmakers in to hearings to ask whether their mandates made sense in the first place, or whether the goals and deadlines laid out were realistic.

As the 111th Congress gets to work, and the Janet Napolitano era at DHS picks up where the Michael Chertoff-led administration left off, critics are hoping that the department hits a smoother stride when it comes to spending taxpayer money on new technologies.

Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project for Government Oversight, said DHS needs to learn "more about buying the things we need, and not just what industry is selling."

There has been a perception that since DHS was new, it had a learning curve on acquisitions, but this grace period has come to an end.

"I think the [department] has had enough time to get up and running," he said.

There is a litany of failures.

The transportation worker identity credential is one of many examples.

Congress charged DHS to develop an identity card for those who need access to U.S. ports. The program missed several deadlines, and after seven years of waste and mismanagement, workers are being enrolled, but there is no technological backbone or readers in place to monitor the cards. If a worker is fired from his job at one port, he could still gain access to another port with the card because readers are not linked to a central database.

Peter Higgins, an identity management consultant, said at a biometric conference last year that the United Kingdom spent seven years studying all facets of a national identity card before passing a law requiring its use.

That kind of methodical planning was not done for TWIC and is almost unheard of in the U.S. Congress. There seems to be little thought on the part of Congress as to how much some of these mandates will cost taxpayers or companies that must comply with the laws.

The 9/11...