Budget, homeland battles leave INS tech future up in the air

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has had a rough year.

The agency has suffered stinging criticism from Congress for the dilapidated state of its technology systems and its inability to share anti-terrorism information with other agencies. It has been overwhelmed by hundreds of proposals to fix the problem. But the agency's plans for a complete upgrade of its technology infrastructure are murky because INS officials don't know yet how the agency will fit into the proposed Homeland Security Department.

In an interview with Government Executive, Scott Hastings, INS' chief information officer, talked about how he's dealing with the situation, which has been complicated by the fact that Congress has yet to pass a fiscal 2003 budget for the agency. As a result, it's difficult to know whether the INS' ongoing projects will be enhanced or curtailed.

"To say it's not clear to me would be an understatement," Hastings said.

The INS' effort to upgrade its technology infrastructure, known as ATLAS, is one of Hastings' top priorities. The agency is in "dire need" of buying new hardware, he said. Personnel are using desktop computers so old they support only low-end programs.

The upgrade received an initial round of funding in the fiscal 2002 budget, and is slated for $100 million more in fiscal 2003. However, the Office of Management and Budget has halted all spending on new infrastructure projects like ATLAS in agencies likely to move into the new Homeland Security Department.

Another high-profile project that has stalled is the entry-exit system, which would log a physical record-such as a fingerprint or eye scan-of every foreigner entering or leaving the United States. President Bush requested $326 million to fund the system this fiscal year, but there are lingering doubts that it could be set up at every point of entry without causing massive backups of people and vehicles at border crossings.

"It's a hugely complicated, mammoth undertaking," Hastings said, comparing the task to creating an air traffic control system. He's unsure when a request for proposals might be issued, because the agency is still reviewing the feasibility of the plan.

Hastings has also been busy working with CIOs at other homeland security agencies to develop a matrix of the administrative systems, such as e-mail programs or financial management software, that each agency is using. The goal is to find the brands most widely used and make them the standard.

Hastings likens the effort to the computer game Tetris, in which a player has to make a jumble of differently shaped boxes fit together. "It's a very dicey thing," he said.

Once the homeland security agencies find common ground on systems, they'll start looking for ways to share information electronically. So far, information sharing has been a matter of physically putting officials from different agencies in a room together, Hastings says. It's had little to do with linking groups together on networks.

The government is largely dependent on private industry to build the systems that will make electronic information sharing happen. Hastings challenged companies to do a better job devising practical solutions on how to share and, more importantly, analyze data. So far, he hasn't seen many.

"My question to industry is, what are the knowledge management techniques to do this?" Hastings said, referring to technologies that sift through mounds of data and pull out what's relevant to a user.

Hastings said he's concerned that as agencies begin moving data out of their home systems to share with others, the information could be worthless unless its put in context. For example, it's of little use to hand a police officer a name from a list of terrorist suspects if the name hasn't been checked against multiple sources to make sure the suspect is really a threat.

The IT challenge in homeland security is complicated by the fact that the costs of failure are much higher than just wasted budget dollars. With one mistake, "suddenly you've brought down Kennedy Airport," Hastings said.

But CIOs can't afford not to act, either. And therein lies their dilemma, Hastings said. When taking a chance on a new idea, he said, "you're either the goat or the hero."