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As I see it Why The Strategic Border Initiative Failed SBInet Industry Day Announcement -- January 26, 2006 Jackson: We are charged to manage, control, and protect our nation's borders... For the entire time that we've been engaged over years in trying to enforce the border, we have never, in my view, had a credible plan for taking on control of the entire southwest border. Glenn Spencer, July 5, 2006: And you still don't. A $2 billion contract will be let in September. Nowhere does SBI spell out a goal that can be measured. This is all of the same nonsense we have seen for years. The program will be run by open borders people at DHS/CBP and will accomplish absolutely nothing except lull the people into a false sense of security. Where We Stand Now "The Department of Homeland Security's ‘virtual fence' along the U.S.-Mexico border is inoperable in the one location it has been deployed, and plans to replicate the technology along the rest of the border have been completely changed or abandoned, government auditors told Congress on Wednesday." Government Accountability Office – Sept. 10, 2008 "The SBInet program office has not effectively defined and managed program expectations, including specific project requirements." How Did I Know? How did I know two years ago that the SBInet project would fail? Simple. I know how the government thinks about illegal immigration law enforcement. The power-elite that run our government do not want to control the border and I knew they would figure out a way to make it fail. How did they do this? SBInet was doomed to failure because the government did not define goals, or requirements, in a way that could be measured. Why is this important? There is an old saying; "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." The government merely reversed engineered this concept, i.e., "If you don't want to improve it, don't measure it." The requirement of the SBI should have been to stop illegal immigration but it never said that. It should have gone on further and set a goal of reducing illegal immigration to some set level. For example, SBI management could have said: "By 2011 no more than 20,000 people should successfully enter the country illegally between ports of entry." (This would have been a 98% reduction.) They would then design a system to meet that goal. The system would have included a way of measuring progress. But there's the rub. In order for management to measure success, the Border Patrol would have to report the total number of people entering illegally. This would be a fairly straightforward job, but the government doesn't want people to know that number. As a result they avoid using the one metric that would allow them to properly design the system. Let me give you an example. In January 2006, DHS held a number of "Industry Days" for people interested in bidding on contracts. At these meetings (a video of one of the meetings can be seen here.) Kevin Stevens, Acting Director of the SBInet system for Customs and Border Protection said the objective of the system was to "Gain, maintain and expand," whatever that means. Stevens, using a PowerPoint presentation, said the SBInet has one strategic goal: Establish and maintain control of our border. He did not define what control of the border means, nor did he say when we would know when we achieved it. He said, "in order to establish and maintain control of our borders there are three things we need to do." He then listed the following...
This is where the SBInet system went wrong. Instead of defining what border security meant, he went on to say how it could be achieved. He jumped from a goal orientation to a means orientation, right over the definition of border security. In defining "Detect" Stevens said "If we don't know what is going on we don't know how to address it." The same thing applies to the entire border. If we don't know how many people are crossing the border and how much we want to reduce it, how do we know how to address it? Nowhere in Stevens' presentation does he say the goal of the system is to stop illegal immigration. He says we have to detect border crossers, identify and classify them and respond. He assumes that people are going to successfully cross the border. If we had a double fence system such as in San Diego, topped with concertina wire we wouldn¹t have many border crossers to detect in the first place, but his approach didn¹t include such a direct solution. The importance of defining a measurable goal or objective cannot be underestimated. In selecting from various means, it is important to select those things that are most cost-effective. It is unrealistic on its face to say we can or should control the border mainly with Border Patrol agents. The Border Patrol is approaching 20,000 agents. The annual cost of operating a 20,000 member Border Patrol probably approaches $2 billion. Let's say the government had set a goal of reducing illegal immigration to, say, 20,000 per year, and that super technology and a "virtual fence" let's them achieve that goal. What then? The average agent would apprehend an illegal on the average of one per year. Having 20,000 people sitting around with nothing to do is not a good use of resources, and it would be a terrible job. But this serious problem would only be only be exposed if a specific goal had been set. Now, if it were found that building a double fence across 700 miles of border costing $3 billion would allow the job to be done with only 5,000 agents, the investment would be returned in two years. Double the cost and it still makes sense. But these kinds of trade-offs can only be made when border security is defined in a way that allows cost analysis in terms of specific objectives. Systems Management Concepts of large-scale systems management are well known in military circles, and throughout federal government for that matter. Unfortunately there is no evidence that the Department of Homeland Security moved to employ these disciplines in the development of the Secure Border Initiative. Boeing should have known better as it is a major military contractor and its management must have been exposed to modern management systems. The SBInet got into trouble because top management in the Department of Homeland Security wanted it to fail. An Expensive Boondogle A review of the SBI budget exposes major imbalances. According the GAO the strategic border initiative spent $2.7 billion while only building 109 miles of fence (as of Aug. 22). Boeing's program management alone cost $144 million. Another budget element, Design, cost another $84 million. Another, Supply Chain Management cost $313.3 million. The waste of hundreds of millions of dollars in this politically driven project speaks volumes about why the United States of America faces bankruptcy. Had the DHS used all of the money to build a double fence along the border we would be more secure today and require fewer Border Patrol agents, thereby saving money and securing the border. But that is not what the government wanted to do. By the way, I attended the SBInet briefing in Sierra Vista in January, 2007. I asked the Boeing rep what SBInet had to do with the Secure Fence Act of 2006. His answer was "We are activators – we activate what the government tells us to activate." In other words, there was no relationship. Summing Up I called the Strategic Border Initiative the Strategic Bullsh*t Initiative and I was right. But my conclusions are harsh and personal. As a result they will be totally unacceptable in polite company. For more politically correct words, I turn to Randolph C. Hite, the man in the Government Accountability Office, who said: ....SBInet requirements have not been effectively defined and managed. While the program office recently issued guidance that does a good job of defining key practices for effectively developing and managing requirements, the guidance was developed after several important activities had been completed. In the absence of this guidance, the program has not effectively performed key requirements definition and management practices, such as ensuring that different levels of requirements are properly aligned." |
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