Department of Homeland Security: Acquiring Essential Technologies
Resist a stove-piped approach and look across missions to achieve agency goals and cost efficiency.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can spend millions of dollars on technology each year to fulfill its mission. But is purchasing the right approach, especially considering the increasingly short life cycle between technology generations? This year’s state-of-the-art device can become obsolete within a very short time. So how should the DHS acquire the technology it needs?
In a recent presentation to the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Essential Technologies Task Force, Booz Allen Hamilton Vice President Jack Mayer proposed a new approach to determining how and why technology could be acquired. Mayer leads the firm’s work with the DHS, providing expertise in strategy, organizational change, learning systems, strategic communications, and intelligence support.
He shared with boozallen.com some of the firm’s insights into DHS’s technology procurement process and recommended approach.
boozallen.com: Can you give us some background on this issue?
Mayer: From a technology perspective, there is so much that DHS would like to do, but they don’t have unlimited resources. At the same time, the department is trying to bring in emerging technology, as well as leverage what’s currently available to help protect the country and defeat the enemy.
When DHS buys technology, such as radiation portals for example, they spend tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars. Then a year later, there’s a new generation that meets a greater need, and the department is looking to replace what it just bought. Also, For the most part, technology acquisition is done agency-by-agency, component-by-component, which could be adding to the expense. We suggested there might be a better way to acquire the technology DHS needs by taking a mission-related focus instead.
boozallen.com: How would that work?
Mayer: DHS was formed by bringing together 22 separate agencies and reorganizing them into ten units. Look at Customs & Border Protection (CBP) and the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), for example. CBP runs the international registered traveler program and TSA runs the national program, but they are both concerned with traveler security. The two programs could integrate technology by using a procurement process that transcends the agency-need level and looks across the mission to see what is shared by the two programs.
boozallen.com: How might DHS go about implementing it?
Mayer: There are no silver bullets with respect to technology procurement for DHS. It’s a fairly new department—just celebrating its fifth anniversary—and still organized bureaucratically instead of by mission area. But they are moving toward the mission approach. However, there are some key principles that DHS and its organizational units can consider that would make technology procurement more efficient. The whole idea is to better use existing resources to tailor technology to the mission and the capabilities that are needed. Look across agencies at the mission level first, and then identify the technology that would achieve mission goals. It’s important to resist taking a stove-piped approach.
boozallen.com: How did the Homeland Security Advisory Council task force take to your recommendations?
Mayer: We were not the only company they asked to present. The task force is gathering ideas from many other industry players. But Booz Allen may have been the only one recommending a broader strategic approach. The feedback I got was that they understood our point about integrating across capabilities and mission areas. It made a lot of sense to them.
story posted April 16, 2008
