ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
A pilot project to test a virtual fence along the U.S-Mexico border is riddled with technical problems, so much so that completion of the first phase of the project will be delayed by at least three years. That's according to an investigation by the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.
The virtual fence pilot project covers 28 miles of the border, south of Tucson. The GAO's Richard Stana detailed the problems before Congress yesterday. He explained that Boeing got nearly $21 million to design the pilot, which is called Project 28.
Mr. RICHARD M. STANA (Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office): It involves cameras, radars, sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles, and of course computer equipment that ties all these things together. When they first put a bid in on the Project 28, Boeing wanted to design it in such a way that they pulled off-the-shelf components together and thereby, they thought, lowering the risk of failure. Well, the components turned out to be okay, but integrating all the components with the software proved to be a much greater challenge than perhaps they had figured on.
BLOCK: And what are some of the problems that they encountered?
Mr. STANA: Well, some of the problems they encountered along the way, and some of them have been fixed but others haven't. Our cameras can only see certain distances, they wanted to have them go out around 10 kilometers. We were down there a couple of weeks ago. They told us that, all too often, they can only go around five and then a grainy image appears, which is not good when you're trying to identify and classify people coming across the border.
Radars that were being thrown off by raindrops and wind-blowing mesquite leaves - it was causing false positives, the radar to train in on things it shouldn't had trained in on. And the biggest problem though was getting the Common Operating Picture, or the COP, to work right. So that all of these different inputs from the sensors and the cameras and the radars could be displayed on a common screen so that people in a control room and Border Patrol agents in their vehicles with a laptop-type computer could follow developments as they unfold in a certain situation.
BLOCK: Are the problems that you describing fixable or does the whole system need to be tossed out and they need to start again?
Mr. STANA: Well, some of the problems have been fixed. I think that they've pretty much gone on top of the radar issue. The cameras, I think they're going to be swapping out. They never quite worked out to the satisfaction of the Border Patrol. But I think the real issue here is where do we go from here?
It's really important that they learn the lessons from Project 28 down the line, and I think these lessons are simply three. One is, is you really ought to involve the Border Patrol users when you define your requirements for the system. These requirements were set mostly by Boeing people, and so it's not the right laptop or the right configuration for the agent vehicles, some of the components are subject to breakage, and so on.
The second major lesson is that these components and their integration really needs to be tested before you attempt to deploy the technology, and Boeing deployed it without prior testing and that's why final acceptance was months away from the original target date.
And I think the last one is also a very important lesson and that is - be careful how you raise expectations on projects like this. This is a very ambitious project, to create a virtual fence. There are going to be bumps on the road. The important thing is to get it right, not to do it fast and create mistakes along the way. And I think if they incorporate the kind of lessons they learn from Project 28 I think that will help out in the long run.
BLOCK: Mr. Stana, when you testified before congress yesterday, you told the committee that DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, had worked too fast in this case. Was it your feeling that they were under political pressure to do that because of the immigration debate going on at that time.
Mr. STANA: Well, I didn't link it to the immigration debate or political pressure. There is no doubt pressure to secure the southwest border before immigration reform can go on, but I'm not sure there's that direct linkage. Some short cuts were taken that maybe shouldn't have been because it was an ambitious time frame, and here we are.
BLOCK: Mr. Stana, thanks very much for talking with us.
Mr. STANA: Thank you very much.
BLOCK: Richard Stana, director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues for the Government Accountability Office, that's the investigative arm of Congress.
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