Napolitano defends DHS acquisitions on department's 10-year anniversary.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Homeland Security News

* As the Department of Homeland Security marked its first decade of existence in March, Secretary Janet Napolitano said its much-derided acquisition system had turned a corner,

It is "one of the largest evolutions in the last few years," in the department, she said at a panel discussion that included its first two secretaries, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff.

"The undersecretary for management has put good governance around acquisition, which is what you want," she said at the event, sponsored by Politico.

Napolitano did not mention by name any of the department's high-profile failures, which have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Transportation Security Administration explosive sniffers and scanners, Secure Border Initiative sensors and nuclear-radiation monitors for shipping containers are some of the more notable ones.

But she alluded to one of the chief problems: technology was fielded before it was ready.

"What you want to do is have an acquisition program that allows you to ascertain as early as possible whether something is really going to work or not. And to cut it off as quickly as you can once the decision has been made," she said.

DHS now has an intra-department acquisition review board that looks at every new program of $1 million or more. There has also been extensive training for acquisition personnel.

"When you are dealing with new technologies in a new domain that have to be scalable to something as large and complex as the United States--when you are pushing the envelope--you are bound to have some failures. That happens," she...