Government Executive - Authors - Ted Leventhal

Weak coordination hampers efforts on medical databases

Ted Leventhal — Wed, 19 May 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Valerie Melvin, the assistant director of information management issues at the General Accounting Office (GAO), testified that while she has been encouraged by recent agency presentations on their progress, overall the agencies have been "severely challenged" in creating a virtual medical-records system as part of their Health-e-People e-government initiative.

Other witnesses who spoke to a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee added that the creation of an e-records system for the healthcare industry is necessary to reduce costs and eliminate preventable medical errors by caregivers.

"[Veterans Affairs] and [Defense] continue to lack a clearly defined architecture and technological solution for developing the electronic interface and associated capability for exchanging patient health information between their new systems," Melvin said. "Moreover, the departments remain challenged to articulate a clear vision of how this capability will be achieved and in what time frame."

Melvin said the initiative lacks a "fully established project-management structure," with relationships among managers not clearly established and no lead entity for final decisions.

Meanwhile, agency officials told GAO that they are moving ahead with an electronic pharmacy system, which GAO questioned given the lack of an overall strategy for the initiative.

"Until these critical components have been put into place, the departments will continue to lack a convincing position regarding their approach to and progress toward achieving the Health-e-People goals and, ultimately, risk jeopardizing the initiative's overall success," Melvin said.

Jonathan Javitt, chairman of the health subcommittee of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, said creating an electronic system is vital to reducing death and injury from medical errors.

"It is time we stopped delivering 21st-century care using administrative methods that were well established when Hippocrates entered practice more than 2,000 years ago," he said. "There are simply too many bits of information for the human computer to track perfectly, particularly when patients are cared for by multiple doctors."

He estimated that electronic systems already cut between $80 billion to $350 billion in costs annually, but the lack of comprehensive national studies makes calculating such savings unreliable.

Jonathan Perlin, acting undersecretary for health, demonstrated a prototype electronic-records system for the subcommittee and touted its benefits.

And James Reardon, chief information officer with the Military Health System, described ongoing information-sharing efforts among the Defense Health Technology Program and other departments and agencies.

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Officials announce plan to share terrorism intelligence

Ted Leventhal — Fri, 14 May 2004 00:00:00 -0400

"No single government agency, or government, can win the war on terrorism," Ashcroft said. FBI Director Robert Mueller and Homeland Security Department Undersecretary Frank Libutti attended the announcement.

Details of the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan were developed at a 2002 law-enforcement summit convened by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to examine the requirements necessary for a national network that would gather, analyze and share information and intelligence on criminal and terrorist activities.

On Friday, Ashcroft said the greatest structural failure in thwarting the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks involved the "impediments to communication and information sharing among the men and women charged with keeping America safe."

"Government erected a wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents," he said. "Government buttressed this wall, and before, government was blinded by this wall."

Ashcroft added that coupled with new powers granted law enforcement under the 2001 anti-terrorism law known as the USA PATRIOT Act, the intelligence initiative will have a great impact. He said the PATRIOT Act has of led to the arrests terrorist suspects nationwide and to the freezing of funds designated for terrorist activities.

"Congress must keep these tools in place for law enforcement," Ashcroft said.

Technology has made tracking criminals and terrorists increasingly difficult, Mueller said, but the intelligence-sharing plan will help keep law enforcement ahead of the tech curve.

"As we look at the challenges of the future, we are struck by a complicated criminal landscape," Mueller said. "Cellular phones and jet travel are technological improvements that make it increasingly difficult to address these threats. We need to develop the capability to gather, analyze and distribute information throughout the enterprise."

The plan establishes a Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council to set national policies for information sharing and to monitor progress on the state and local levels.

It builds on ongoing Justice Department initiatives such as the Law Enforcement Information Strategy Initiative, the FBI's department-wide intelligence-sharing initiative, and the Drug Enforcement Administration's National Virtual Pointer System, which provides common information access for agencies that are investigating the same suspects.

Justice has created a common XML-based tech standard for sharing information, and all new systems will be based on that Justice XML Data Dictionary, the department announced. The department also is pursuing research into new XML standards, analytical tools and security technology to foster future information sharing.

Meanwhile, Ashcroft announced at an afternoon event that a probe into pornography distribution over Internet file-sharing networks produced 1,000 investigations and more than 65 arrests.

"Individuals are trolling the back alleys and dark corners of the Internet," he said, adding that a joint effort by the Justice Department, the FBI, U.S. Immigrations and Customs, and local task forces have identified 3,371 computers distributing child pornography through peer-to-peer networks over the Internet.

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FBI's new CIO details plans for upcoming projects

Ted Leventhal — Fri, 07 May 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Zalmai Azmi, who took over the position on Friday, added that negotiations are underway with contractor Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) to finalize deployment of the bureau's anticipated Virtual Case File network. Azmi said a performance-based contract with the firm is expected to be signed within four weeks, and delivery of the network is expected by the end of the year.

Azmi said the first stage of the case-file network was delivered last year, but SAIC's estimated time for completion was deemed "unacceptable," and FBI and contractor officials are now re-negotiating the terms and timetable for final delivery.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., on Friday asked the General Accounting Office to investigate whether the FBI has managed the relationship with SAIC competently. Sensenbrenner said he was concerned that the delay in the delivery of the system would further drag behind the FBI's network modernization program, which lawmakers also criticized for being considerably behind schedule.

Azmi joined the Justice Department five years ago as the assistant director for office automation with the U.S. Attorney's office, and moved to the FBI six months ago. Azmi said the FBI in 1999 was struggling with Intel 386 desktop computers, dial-up online connections and lacked a centralized IT planning office.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Azmi said FBI Director Robert Mueller launched an information modernization plan going beyond the scope of Trilogy, which was planned in 1999, but not launched until 2000.

The Trilogy upgrade includes the deployment of 500 network servers, 1,600 scanners and thousands of desktop computers to FBI field offices. But Azmi said that in November 2003, the bureau embarked on a more ambitious plan to consolidate and modernize nearly 200 internal information technology networks to improve productivity within the bureau and provide information-sharing capabilities with the government's other intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

"We are already looking at plans to upgrade the FBI's infrastructure next year," he said, with the desktop computers ordered in 1999 now considered outdated. "We can't let the bad guys have better equipment than we do." The upgrade plan includes extending Trilogy's computer platform to the new Terrorist Screening Center.

Azmi said the bureau also plans to increase the number of Internet-accessible computers available to agents, but with the many classified computers at the FBI, Internet access will likely be in separate banks of computers instead of on the desktop. "We are constantly under hacker attack, and we don't want to give them the opportunity to get in and look around," he said.

Azmi also disputed reports that in FBI field offices today only a single computer is available with Internet access. He added that with increased funds it would be possible to install separate hard drives at an agent's desk with one directly connected to the Internet.

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Contractor finally delivers upgraded FBI computer system

Ted Leventhal — Mon, 03 May 2004 00:00:00 -0400

"We hit a few bumps on this one, but ended it on a high note," Paul Cofoni, president of CSC's federal sector, told National Journal's Technology Daily in an interview. Working on Trilogy was "a career milestone for all of us involved."

The FBI awarded the Trilogy contract to CSC in May 2001 to move the bureau from a largely paper-based information system with outdated information technology to a modern network providing agents with access to text, audio and video files at their desktop.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, however, the FBI put the Trilogy contract on an accelerated schedule, and CSC's failure to meet key benchmarks drew ire from senior FBI officials and federal lawmakers. Trilogy initially was budgeted at $379.8 million over three years, and Congress budgeted an additional $78 million to meet an accelerated delivery date of summer 2002.

In March, however, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the FBI budget, criticized FBI Director Robert Mueller for falling behind on Trilogy's delivery date. "This panel has dedicated massive amount of dollars and time to working with the FBI" on the project, Gregg said. "It's now $2 million over budget and ... years behind schedule." Mueller maintained that Trilogy would be delivered in April and said the additional funds were "money well spent."

Cofoni said the advanced delivery schedule was "too advanced" given the scope of the project, and even with extra funds the contractor was severely taxed in meeting the delivery deadline.

"We didn't freeze the final design of the system [with the FBI] until last summer," he said, adding that getting all field offices to agree on common technical standards incurred additional delays. "We probably should have done a better job of escalating. If we had been working at a higher level at the FBI, we would have solved these issues faster," he added. Cofoni said CSC "had to scramble" to find extra staff with the appropriate security clearances to meet the accelerated schedule. "The FBI did help us by expediting the clearance process, but it was still quite an effort," he added.

The Trilogy project involved three phases of meeting specific deadlines, and ultimately provided new network, hardware and software to 29,000 users in more than 600 locations. According to CSC, many FBI employees prior to Trilogy were working on desktop computers nearly eight years old and unable to run basic office software applications. Many officers were connected to the Internet at speeds slower than most home users and lacked reliable office e-mail, the company said.

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IRS contractor pledges to meet revised modernization schedule

Ted Leventhal — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Lawmakers have become increasingly impatient with delays and cost overruns surrounding the Customer Account Data Engine, a multi-year effort to replace IRS' antiquated "master file" with a modern database. The master file holds more than 150 million taxpayer records and serves as the hub of the tax-collection system.

At a hearing this month, Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the IRS, said the department's modernization efforts have "woefully under performed," adding that "schedule slippages and cost overruns have been epidemic."

Shelby worried that the current modernization could repeat an earlier two-year program to update IRS systems that failed after spending $4 billion. "That effort was a complete loss," he said.

Paul Cofoni of Computer Sciences Corp. acknowledged "some performance issues" in an interview about his firm's work on the modernization. But he said the delays were due to the age and complexity of the old system and unexpected technical problems in the overhaul process.

"We are getting better and better at this," he said, adding that while CSC is "not out of the woods yet," he expects delivery of the project's multiple stages to occur on its revised schedule.

Cofoni noted that IRS system modernization has been attempted twice before, but no contractor has moved as far as CSC in terms of a complete overhaul.

CSC is set to test the first phase of the database this summer. It will automate income-tax records submitted on 1040 EZ forms, which constitute 5 million of the 150 million total IRS files. The system is expected to be online in January. Final work is being completed on an internal records system set for delivery on a revised schedule in October.

CSC touted several smaller electronic systems that came online last fall and winter, making tax filing simpler and easier for a large segment of tax filers trying to meet the April 15 deadline. The seven systems enabled third-party tax filers, including tax-preparation services, to create accounts for tax filing on a secure database, search for clients' relevant information, such as a taxpayer identification numbers, and resolve online any questions from the IRS, Cofoni said.

He said more than 10,000 third-party tax filers took advantage of the system this year. "It has been very favorably received by that constituent base."

He noted that 24 million individual tax filers used applications to check the status of tax refunds and the status of child tax credits. "That's 24 million fewer phone calls to the IRS this year."

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Pentagon official says nanotechnology a high priority

Ted Leventhal — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 00:00:00 -0400

"Nanotechnology is one of the highest priority science and technology programs in the Defense Department," said Clifford Lau, the senior science adviser in the Pentagon's office of basic research. Lau, who also serves as president of the nanotechnology council at the engineering group IEEE, said research is being coordinated across the military branches, and plans are in place to transition the technology from basic research to deployment.

Lau said the Pentagon spent $315 million in fiscal 2004 on all nanotechnology research. The president's budget request for fiscal 2005 calls for $276 million for nanotechnology, but Lau said congressional appropriators likely will boost that number higher than the fiscal 2004 level.

Pentagon interest in nanotechnology dates to the 1980s, Lau said. Today, Defense-funded basic research programs include 16 multimillion-dollar annual grants to university researchers as part of the defense university-research initiatives in nanotechnology and some 25 grants under the multidisciplinary university-research initiative.

In addition, service branches recently have opened sophisticated facilities for nanotech research, including the Army Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies and the Naval Research Laboratory's nanotech institute, a windowless, controlled environment capable of the most advanced research.

Lau also touted nanotech applications already in use by the military services. The Navy, for instance, uses nanotech coatings on submarines to eliminate barnacle buildup and protect bearings against corrosion on surface ships. And the Air Force is using lightweight, radar-resistant nano-composite materials in the airframes of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Advanced development also is underway to use nanotechnology to improve the detection of and defense against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, he said, and stronger, lighter nano-composites will be inserted in advanced body armor.

In addition, the Pentagon is funding nearly $100 million in nanotech research for information technology. It is intended for advanced sensors, computer processors and communication devices.

"Nanotechnology is a 'force multiplier,' " Lau said. "It will make us faster and stronger on the battlefield."

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Homeland Security science directorate may get budget boost

Ted Leventhal — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Simon Szykman, the director of cybersecurity research and development at the department, told members of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee on Tuesday that "priorities are being reconsidered" for the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA). He said the agency's $18 million budget for cyber-security research, out of a total $1 billion fiscal 2004 research budget, might be increased.

Szykman said HSARPA's mission is evolving into one similar to that of the military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, with some 20 percent of its budget tagged for long-term research. "Our long-term vision is to address all research areas, not just on the short-term side," he said.

Asked how HSARPA will avoid duplicating DARPA research, Szykman said, "My customer is the nation's critical infrastructure." He also said that while DARPA research is classified, HSARPA will strive to conduct unclassified, short- and long-term research on cyber security.

Szykman emphasized that Homeland Security's cyber-security research is intended solely to serve the needs of the department's cyber-security division and the national communications system within the information and infrastructure protection directorate. "Our broader challenge is to stay within our mandate" of serving specific homeland security needs and "not deal with every cyber-security problem," he said.

While HSARPA is examining traditional security measures to protect and prevent cyber attacks, it also is reviewing the long-term issues of network security, such as the Internet's underlying routing protocols and secure process-control system.

"Many of the security problems we are facing today are a result of not having security designed up front," Szykman said. The department also is working to develop testing metrics for the return on investment in security technologies, he said.

Szykman said HSARPA is looking to coordinate research efforts with other key federal agencies, including the National Security and Technology Council, a working group on protecting critical information infrastructure, and the Information Security Research Council, which examines long-term research goals and projects.

He noted that SRI International has been awarded a $3 million contract to establish a cyber-security R&D center to support the execution of department programs.

"We have a strong management plan and a long-term vision," he said.

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Homeland Security official urges prudent cyber approach

Ted Leventhal — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:00:00 -0400

In comments to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, Amit Yoran called for a prudent approach to addressing cyber vulnerabilities. The committee met to hear testimony on the status of ongoing government cyber-security research, and on remaining long-term security needs.

Yoran highlighted the problem of known software flaws being written into commercial software and said even the benefits of more secure software will take years to be realized. "The same 19 programming flaws account for 90 percent of the vulnerabilities discovered," he said.

However, even if the tools and techniques available today for secure software were implemented, it would be a "number of year cycles" before these improvements reached businesses and consumers, he said.

There is no "silver bullet" to guarantee cyber security, Yoran said, but a combination of techniques and practices are available. "We need to think outside the box in terms of how our reliance on information technology can be used against us," he said, but any action should be a well thought out and cautious approach.

"If it were so simple to take down the Internet with a few keystrokes, we would have seen this already," said Yoran, who called for greater research into the economics of cyber security and how to gauge the return on investment from security measures.

However, commission co-Chairman Edward Lazowska objected when Yoran suggested that venture capital, not the government, could better fund research into advanced security technologies. "Companies look only a couple of years out and that's it," Lazowska said, adding that government has a "clear role" to play to nurture ideas for implementation a generation later.

"Venture capital plays a role at the end of the pipe," he said.

Carl Landwehr, the cyber-security research director at the National Science Foundation, said the foundation has received $64 million for fiscal 2004 research grants and has requested $76 million for fiscal 2005. Landwehr cited 175 NSF-funded research programs in trusted computing.

Large-scale grants include a multi-university test bed to study "sensitive information in the wired world" and the $5.45 million Defense Technology Experimental Research Network run by the University of California at Berkeley.

Landwehr added that the Commerce, Defense, Energy and Homeland Security departments also are funding cyber-security research.

David Clark, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said a "renaissance, if not a revolution," in computer-security research is underway.

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Government, firms unveil cybersecurity framework

Ted Leventhal — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 00:00:00 -0400

The report, "Information Security Governance: A Call to Action," was drafted by the corporate governance task force formed at a cybersecurity summit of information technology companies in December. The framework draws on existing guidelines for information security, including those found in U.S. law and some produced by an international standards organization. It also includes suggestions for pairing security duties to corporate functions and is applicable to organizations of various sizes.

While many top executives are aware of cybersecurity threats, few know what to do about it, said Entrust CEO Bill Connor, co-chair of the task force. "The road to a secure cyberspace leads through corporate governance," he said.

We "wanted to make clear that the leaders of businesses and organizations have a fiduciary responsibility to have strong information and cyber security," said RSA Data Security CEO and task force co-chair Art Coviello. "It's hard to imagine that any CEO would not take this as a significant responsibility."

Federal Trade Commissioner Orson Swindle said corporate managers eventually will embrace the need for greater information security in a manner similar to the response to privacy threats during the last decade.

"Information security is a journey, not a destination," he said. "Today's announcement is a positive step. We're urging companies to step up and make a public commitment."

The report calls for participants to actively promote the framework throughout the business community, but no details or a timetable were offered. It calls upon Homeland Security to "endorse" the framework and "encourage the private sector to make cybersecurity part of its corporate governance efforts."

The report also calls on businesses and organizations to post on their Web sites notices that they follow the governance guidelines. The Business Software Alliance, the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, the Information Technology Association of America and TechNet called on their member companies to abide by the guidelines.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif., and House Government Reform Technology Subcommittee Chairman Adam Putnam, R-Fla., endorsed the report and said they would continue oversight of the issue.

Cox said cybersecurity "is and will continue to be" a priority for his committee and that public-private partnerships are essential to secure cyberspace.

"Corporate America, including businesses of all sizes and types, has a responsibility to address its IT security profile in a proactive manner," Putnam added.

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Ridge: Priorities include data sharing, cybersecurity

Ted Leventhal — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Ridge told a meeting of the Homeland Security Advisory Council that developing advanced communications systems to enable personnel in different agencies to talk "will make this department a 21st-century department." He also emphasized the importance of integrating border- and port-security programs, and promoting management innovations.

Ridge said he wants the Homeland Security to finalize a list of the nation's critical infrastructure this year. He also said the department will work to loosen visa restrictions on non-immigrant foreigners, particularly for business and student applicants.

Acknowledging that business transactions have been compromised and business lost because of travel restrictions imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ridge said the department will see what changes can be made to ease restrictions. "We adjusted our polices after 9/11," he said. "Now, we'll see if we need to adjust the adjustment."

Ridge also spoke on Wednesday at Equity International's Homeland and Global Security Summit in Washington where he said the government "can do much to broaden" innovation for homeland security efforts, but "much of the work" will happen at universities, national laboratories and companies.

Those entities will help "push the scientific envelope," he said.

On President Bush's fiscal 2005 budget proposal for homeland security, Ridge said the funding "absolutely" would provide adequate dollars for its priorities and expressed confidence that Congress would "honor" the funding levels for homeland security. Bush proposed a 9.6 percent increase for security efforts in his proposal unveiled early February.

Homeland Security Deputy Secretary James Loy said the department is moving quickly to integrate and consolidate the redundant human resources, acquisition and procurement systems of the 22 agencies merged to create the department. "Nineteen payroll systems have become seven, and they're on the way to becoming one," he said.

Loy added that he has met with federal employee unions to discuss what "tweaks" can be made to the civil-service system to make it more effective. "We have an opportunity to set in place the right way to do business," he said.

The council also discussed plans for a centralized, online glossary of Homeland Security terms and acronyms, noting that several acronyms have different meanings in different departments.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, chairman of a task force on "first responders" to emergencies, said he will recommend ways to speed the movement of security aid from the federal government to the states and local first responders.

Romney said bureaucratic issues at the local level and other snafus, not problems at Homeland Security, are keeping funds from reaching first responders.

"We are prepared to write the checks," Ridge said, "but we have local procurement problems, and we want to break through the logjams."

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Federal CIOs tout benefits of 'open source' software

Ted Leventhal — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 00:00:00 -0500

"Open source is usually brought forward by technology people very focused on the success of the technology," said John McManus, deputy chief information officer at NASA. "My experience has been that technology sold up through an agency will be more successful than something sold from the top down."

He added that having access to the software source code is a key factor in choosing the open-source platform. "It's the ability to have the equivalent of custom development," McManus said. "It's a big tipping point for us."

There are plans to launch a forum for the development of specialized e-government programs, with an initial meeting planned for April 5. The officers added that open-source programs have figured prominently in efforts to develop specialized applications, with lower-level programmers passionately advocating the technology to their superiors.

George Thomas, chief information architect with the General Services Administration, said open source has helped GSA move "beyond the best-of-breed" commercial software programs. "We can control every aspect of a given application, not something you can conceive of from a commercial program," he said. "You get to decide how to slice, dice, deploy and manage it. You decide what features come next."

Barry West, CIO at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he became an open-source "convert" a decade ago while working as CIO of the National Weather Service.

"My programmers would come to me and say 'Look at what we can do better, cheaper, even free, with open source,'" he said. West moved the National Weather Service to a Linux-based system he identified as "very cost effective," especially during severe weather incidents where demands on the agency's information infrastructure peak far above normal demands.

FEMA currently operates a "huge piece" of the agency's disaster-response network via open-source software. "Our lead time increases significantly for getting warnings out to the public," West said. Open source "improved performance, encouraged communication among developers and shortened our development cycle."

West said open source has been invaluable in its ability to expand rapidly to cover increased network demand during an emergency. He also touted open source's "near universal adaptability and acceptance" and its "robust, reusable software development patterns," and he praised the quality of support from vendors such as Red Hat.

"The bottom line is, those CIOs not using open source now will be in the next 12 to 24 months," he said.

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Lawmakers voice concerns about emergency preparations

Ted Leventhal — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 00:00:00 -0500

The Emergency Preparedness and Response Subcommittee hearing featured Homeland Security Undersecretary Michael Brown and opened with statements from full committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif., and ranking member Jim Turner, D-Texas.

Cox praised the department's efforts to adapt to the terrorist threat while maintaining an all-hazards approach to emergency response. He said Congress and the administration are working together to reform the grant-making process to first responders, citing the $20 million request for emergency medical supplies and the creation of a National Incident Management System (NIMS) as examples of cooperation.

"An all-hazards approach to emergency management has worked effectively in the past. But the terrorist threat requires more flexible and adaptive programs," Cox said. "We need to show that preparedness, not just response, is the mission" of the emergency preparedness and response directorate. Cox said the full committee will address bills focused on metrics for departmental performance and an authorization to sharpen the department's spending practices.

Turner, meanwhile, questioned the competence of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the core of the directorate. FEMA was ranked last in a November survey of the best places to work in the federal government. Turner also criticized plans to limit the amount of federal grants that can be spent on first responders' salaries.

Subcommittee Chairman John Shadegg, R-Ariz., said he is concerned that the directorate's preparedness mission has been lost, shifting to Homeland Security's Office of State and Local Government Coordination. He said he is worried that the directorate may be "viewed by some in the department as, 'Oh, those are just the response guys.'"

Shadegg asked Brown whether the directorate is maintaining an inventory of all state first-responder prevention, preparedness and response equipment and not duplicating its efforts with other Homeland Security divisions.

Subcommittee ranking member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., criticized administration plans to cut federal grants to augment local first-responder salaries and other ideas. "The president's request seems to ignore these critical needs," he said.

Brown said the administration's budget request maintains record spending levels for disaster planning and first response, most notably $2.5 billion for Project BioShield, $20 million for new emergency medical equipment, and $7 million for NIMS to connect federal, state and local authorities during disasters.

Brown said his directorate is sharing information with the Office of Domestic Preparedness on state supply inventories. He also said Homeland Security will contribute to first-responder salaries in partnership with state and local governments.

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Homeland Security unveils technology advisory panel

Ted Leventhal — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 00:00:00 -0500

The body, mandated under the 2002 law that created the department, consists of top government and industry scientists with expertise in various fields deemed essential to homeland security. In remarks to panel members at their first meeting, Charles McQueary, Homeland Security's undersecretary for science and technology, said their expertise will be vital in helping the department ready equipment to protect the country from terrorism.

"This division has the responsibility to provide the best science directly to our operational units. It's very important to me that this organization help deliver things," McQueary said. "The real important responsibility we have is to engage in scientific areas that will provide capabilities to the nation's first responders" to emergencies.

McQueary said that while the department has succeeded in integrating the operations of the border security agencies, more technology is needed to better secure the flow of goods and people into the United States.

"There are over a billion operations per day" on the nation's borders, he said, "and all we have to do is be right 100 percent of the time. When you consider that people are involved, you realize the tremendous responsibility." He noted that U.S. adversaries "have to be right only once."

McQueary said he has held meetings on border security with his counterparts in Canada and Mexico, as well as those in Israel and Japan. Noting that Mexico has requested help securing traffic along its southern border, McQueary said Mexico may deploy U.S. technologies there that are deemed unsuitable for the U.S. border because of the impact on traffic flow.

Homeland Security will focus increased attention on bioterrorism surveillance and counter measures this year, McQueary said. The department's BioWatch program is now operational in 10 U.S. cities and will be doubled in fiscal 2005, he said.

Meanwhile, the administration's 10th homeland security directive on bioterrorism is now in final draft form and will be issued soon, McQueary added.

BioWatch partners Homeland Security with the Environmental Protection Agency to operate sophisticated sensors to test air quality daily, record the results and analyze them for irregularities. "We've taken 1.5 million samples with no false alarms," McQueary said.

The program's "plume modeling" capability even tracked the source of a tularemia bacteria outbreak near Houston. Much of the $126 million funding increase to the science and technology directorate will go to expanding BioWatch, McQueary said.

Meanwhile, McQueary said a chemical-detection system is now operating in subway stations in Washington, D.C., combining air samples with cameras for real-time monitoring. "The system works well," he said, adding that increased funding is needed to expand it because the District of Columbia is paying a "substantial" amount of the $1 million per-station costs.

Future areas of interest include anti-missile defenses for civilian aircraft and improving cyber-security technology. "It's a hard problem," McQueary said. "You can't point to one solution and say this will make networks safer."

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Homeland Security forms groups to bolster cybersecurity

Ted Leventhal — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 00:00:00 -0500

The first group is the Government Forum of Incident Response Teams, or G-FIRST. It will include federal agencies' chief security information officers and computer experts from the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team, Pentagon and civilian federal agencies. The second group, the Chief Information Security Officers Forum, will be a venue for informal information sharing. And the Cyber Interagency Management Group will serve as a forum for defense and law enforcement officials to coordinate a response to a major cyber attack.

"These three groups were established to fill a need for information sharing in government," Larry Hale, deputy director of the department's cyber-security division, said in an interview.

G-FIRST, which Hale described as the most active of the three groups, targets officials who monitor the government's networks around the clock and allows its 100-plus members to communicate anytime over a secure Web portal.

"It has really caught on because of a strong need for a place for 24-7 incident teams to collaborate with each other," Hale said. "There's a real lively exchange of information going on around the clock using this forum."

While Congress ordered every federal agency to appoint a chief security information officer in 2003, "there was no group established for them to share information on their level," he said. Unlike the CIO group, "the security community did not have a similar venue for information sharing," he added. Here, the officers "can ask others if they're having problems with their systems, get advice and share information about getting their jobs done more effectively."

The Cyber Interagency Management Group has a different, action-oriented focus, Hale said. It was created in December as part of a Bush administration presidential directive calling on Homeland Security to coordinate with the Defense, Justice and State departments, along with the intelligence agencies, to manage the response to computer attacks.

The White House directive stipulated that Homeland Security coordinate in the event of an attack. When the department conducted the "Livewire" cyber drill last year, Hale said, "We saw the need for a special group to focus on interagency management of a response to a cyber attack."

But given the likelihood that a major cyber attack could affect physical infrastructure as well, other agencies must become involved, he said. "If it's an international incident, State may have information. If there's a law enforcement component, Justice will be involved."

Members of the Cyber Interagency Management Group meet in person every four to six weeks to discuss issues and policy, Hale said, adding that members also use a secure portal for more frequent, informal contact. "We can pull this group together in a very short period of time" to address an emergency, he said.

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White House expands e-government initiative

Ted Leventhal — Wed, 04 Feb 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Tad Anderson, OMB's associate administrator for e-government and information technology, told reporters after his keynote address that OMB soon will convene task forces to develop details for "lines of business" on health, case management, grants, human-resources management and financial management.

Anderson added that the e-government budget for fiscal 2005 is "not as much as we would like it to be," noting that Congress funded initiatives at less than the administration's fiscal 2004 request and that OMB will work with Congress toward adequate funding for fiscal 2005.

In his speech at a conference on Web-enabled government services, Anderson touted broad and specific e-government accomplishments under the President's Management Agenda.

"Every person, every dollar, falls under the purview of the President's Management Agenda," he said, noting that the agenda "drives or influences every decision made in the federal government today." Anderson added that the agenda has brought greater cooperation among agencies, leading to progress on cost savings and efficiency.

"In breaking out of one's silos, more is gained than lost," he said in a reference to the narrowly focused technology systems of some federal agencies. "Anywhere there is change, there is cooperation. Our government investment in technology is massive."

The federal IT budget is about $164 million per day, Anderson added.

He singled out a $30 million software contract negotiated by the Treasury Department that is expected to produce millions of dollars in future savings and praised the department for overcoming "issues of ownership, control, authority and investment."

He also praised initiatives such as Geodata.gov, which houses 5,300 data sets compiled by 16 federal agencies and 18 states.

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Administration calls for budget increase at science agencies

Ted Leventhal — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 00:00:00 -0500

"Federal non-defense R&D spending is going up substantially," said John Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "This administration has been highly favorable to R&D both in defense and non-defense fields."

The budget calls for $132 billion in R&D, up 44 percent over four years, with civilian R&D up 26 percent for the same period. Marburger added that 13.5 percent of total discretionary spending is going to R&D efforts, "the highest level since the Apollo [space] program."

Marburger said that Defense Department R&D spending would increase "substantially," by $4.4 billion; that funding for the National Institutes of Health would jump by a "fairly impressive" 2.5 percent; and that the budget for the National Science Foundation (NSF) would go up 3 percent, part of the administration's "very substantial support" for NSF over the past four years.

Other programs Marburger touted included: Project BioShield, an initiative to develop and deploy counter measures against bioterrorism; the Education Department's math and science partnerships; and the national nanotechnology initiative.

But Marburger and Marcus Peacock, associate director for natural resource, energy and science programs with the White House Office of Management and Budget, warned that congressional earmarking of R&D funds is having a negative effect on science R&D as a whole.

"R&D earmarks at the Department of Defense have reached $1 billion, something we're very concerned about," Peacock said, adding that the total amount of earmarked funds exceeded $2 billion, up from $296 million in 1996. Marburger said nearly 8 percent of R&D funds to higher education is earmarked, up from 2.5 percent in 1996, a trend that he called "frightening."

However, in a question from the audience, Robert Palmer, a staff member of the House Science Committee, challenged the administration to "show leadership" on unwanted earmarks by refusing to fund the appropriations, which typically are specified in non-binding appropriations reports, not the spending law themselves. "You would catch political hell for it," Palmer said.

Peacock said OMB has considered that approach but noted that former OMB Director Mitchell Daniels instead convened a university consortium to pledge not to accept earmarks. "Obviously, that's not making a dent, and we're concerned," Peacock said.

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Lawmaker, officials promote share-in-savings contracting

Ted Leventhal — Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0500

The share-in-savings programs require little or no upfront spending by government entities. The contractors are paid for services only from the savings the programs generate, thus the contractor assumes all the risk and has a great incentive to achieve results. A 2002 e-government law gave federal agencies the incentive to deploy the programs by allowing them to keep unused funds saved from the programs.

"The issue of constrained budgets will be with us for a long time," said Stephen Perry, head of the General Services Administration. "Share in savings gets contracts launched that otherwise would not see the light of day."

House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., said he is a great supporter of the program but added that the idea faces opposition from other lawmakers. "Some members don't like outsourcing [federal government services]," Davis said. "The unions don't like outsourcing. They don't like people making a profit."

The House and Senate Appropriations committees also do not like the new programs, he said. "They love having control of all contracts because share-in-savings contracts are not awarded through the usual process. They give agency heads flexibility."

Davis said he hopes Congress will change a provision in current e-government law that would end the programs and lift the cap limiting the number of the contracts that may be awarded. Davis noted that the Senate did not pass a procurement bill he introduced last year, but he remains "optimistic" that a similar measure could be passed during this session.

"I am a great believer that if we train procurement officials properly and give them the necessary tools, the federal government can save billions," Davis said. "Waste and fraud are not put in a neat, tight package. We waste tremendous amounts of money because we allow the [procurement] process to drive the outcome. Share in savings reverses that."

"I think this is a great way to save money and the leadership does, too," he added.

Karen Evans, e-government and information technology administrator for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said share-in-savings acquisitions offer federal agencies an opportunity to "really make a difference" and deploy programs they otherwise would not budget. "We all should be looking for opportunities to use this acquisition tool," she added.

Evans said her earlier experiments with performance-based contracting at the Energy Department were very positive. "When you really hold people accountable, the bottom line is that everybody benefits," she said.

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Officials debate difficulties of crafting homeland security policy

Ted Leventhal — Mon, 12 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0500

The panelists said effective security policies will have to balance security, privacy and regulation with self-regulation, while launching new partnerships between government and industry.

Frank Libutti, undersecretary for information analysis and infrastructure protection with the Homeland Security Department, said the department has shown "manifest and tremendous leadership" at every level during the recent heightened security alert, enhanced by the recent creation of the national cyber-security division, a cyber-emergency response team, and partnerships with state and local authorities. He touted more than 50 alerts and bulletins published by his directorate with specific recommendations for infrastructure protection.

Robert Liscouski, Homeland Security's assistant secretary for infrastructure protection, said the department has the extremely challenging mission of conducting initial policy and planning while thwarting real attacks and threats, a process that Secret Service Director Ralph Basham compared with "changing an airplane engine while in mid-flight."

Libutti said despite the U.S government's commitment to homeland security, businesses will need to increase their spending on security. "When necessary, you will need to belly up to put money on the table for readiness," he said. "The terrorist threat is not going away."

Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cyber Security, said Congress must establish metrics to ensure that spending on homeland security is deterring terrorists. "We are spending record amounts of money, but we must decide if we are really becoming safer," he said. "We need to find measurements that matter, and I think that will be hard."

He criticized Homeland Security for delays in integrating its computer networks and intelligence analysis. He also expressed concern that the department's broad mandate could stretch the organization too thin and distract it from "bigger problems," namely the use of weapons of mass destruction in the United States.

Roscoe Howard, a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and law professor Jeffrey Rosen debated the value of privacy in the age of terrorism. Howard said courts should reassess what constitutes an "unreasonable" search as defined by the Fourth Amendment.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "redefined what 'reasonable' means," he said. "The public has told us that any further terrorist attacks are unacceptable."

Rosen said leadership on civil-liberties issues must come from Congress. "Congress has said 'no' to bad data-mining programs [and] ID card plans," he noted.

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White House officials say they took initiative on security directives

Greta Wodele, William New, and Ted Leventhal — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 00:00:00 -0500

A Homeland Security Department spokesman said they were not in response to a mandate; rather, the White House and the department had been working on the directives for months at their own initiative. The White House chose the timing of the announcement, he said.

"It was just a matter of these two directives working their way through the system," a senior White House official added. "That's why they were released yesterday."

An assessment of critical infrastructure is mandated in the law that created the Homeland Security Department, but that mandate did not carry a deadline. However, after hearing from administration officials repeatedly in congressional testimony that the assessment was ongoing and would take several years, the House Appropriations Committee imposed a deadline of Dec. 15 in its report on the bill to fund the department in fiscal 2004.

That report directed the department to detail the proposed scope, estimated cost and schedule for completing a risk analysis and vulnerability assessment for critical infrastructures. The directive released on Wednesday provided neither a budget nor schedule and drew some criticism from several Democratic members of Congress.

"This directive is an admission by the administration that the Department of Homeland Security is not getting the job done," House Homeland Security Committee ranking member Jim Turner, D-Texas, said in a statement. "For months, the Congress has been urging the [department]...to move forward with its responsibility [under the law creating the department] to complete its analysis of critical infrastructure vulnerability in our nation. In addition to [the department], the directive now charges a multitude of other federal agencies with this responsibility."

"This directive gives the department another year to do a job we need completed today," Turner added. "Our enemies will not wait, and neither can we."

On Wednesday, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., cited a desperate need for "leadership to protect its critical infrastructure from terrorist attack. Today, the president has given DHS Secretary Tom Ridge yet another year to develop a 'plan' to develop a 'strategy' to identify, prioritize and protect key critical infrastructures."

"This would almost be laughable were it not such a devastating failure for our country," added Lieberman, who was one of the originators of the department. "The administration has repeatedly assured us it was at work on such plans and strategies. Now we discover the administration has been running in place, leaving us no closer to having meaningful protections for the vital systems and assets the country depends upon each day."

Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, on Wednesday commended Bush for issuing the directives. She said she hoped the administration would "define the roles and responsibilities of federal agencies, establish an effective means of interagency coordination [and] facilitate coordination with the private sector."

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Former e-government officials favor governmentwide plan

Ted Leventhal — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Stephen Squires, Hewlett-Packard's chief science officer and a former senior official with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Mark Forman, the former e-government and information technology chief at the White House, said the government should use inexpensive network servers, advanced computer-operating systems, and specialized software applications to create a tech framework that could eliminate redundant systems in federal agencies.

Separately, Forman told reporters that Congress' reluctance to meet the Bush administration's request for a central e-government fund will not thwart implementation of such initiatives.

Hewlett-Packard is repositioning itself as a framework computing company, shifting computer intelligence from desktop systems to networks, and the conference was designed to demonstrate how an "adaptive enterprise" would work for government. "In the future, we will look at computers the way we look at electricity," with portable computer devices that "just plug into the wall," said Bruce Klein, vice president of HP's federal division.

Squires said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks demonstrated that the U.S. defense complex had "over-optimized itself to win the Cold War" and needs to be retooled for the 21st century. "The only way the United States will achieve strategic advantage in economic and strategic security is to work with emerging technologies," he said.

Building government-wide systems can create a virtual network of critical resources -- including emergency response and supplies -- that could be activated and monitored quickly, Squires said. With 85 percent of the nation's critical infrastructure in private hands, government and industry must cooperate to build an intelligent communications network that goes "beyond the Internet."

Such a network could track, locate and communicate with "first responders" to emergencies. "The day will come when there will be a building-code requirement in every room for ubiquitous wireless communication," Squires said, "giving business and government a strategic advantage in ordinary times and also during an extraordinary event."

Forman noted that the greatest recent computer innovations have been in infrastructure. The law of diminishing returns shows that devoting money and personnel toward a management problem yields limited results, he said, whereas adaptable computer infrastructures yield greater returns.

Forman said oversight of government technology by House Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., and Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., is moving the government toward a leveraged computer system.

The Linux computer-operating system soon will play a bigger role in federal technology, Forman said. "Linux is more robust; it fits better for heavy-duty applications," he said of the "open source" system that is open to review and alteration. "There's a clear path to Linux for servers."

He further argued that a central e-government fund is not essential for tech deployment, but that continued oversight by the White House Office of Management and Budget is. OMB can go to individual agencies and tell them to "shut down redundant investments and join the common plan," Forman said.

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Homeland Security science division will also tackle cybersecurity

Greta Wodele and Ted Leventhal — Thu, 04 Dec 2003 00:00:00 -0500

In interviews with reporters from National Journal's Technology Daily, the senior officials emphasized that while their focus primarily will be developing technologies to counter threats posed by weapons of mass destruction, cyber security is a necessary component of their mission to support the technology needs of the operational directorates. They said computer-security experts will join the organization soon to guide research and development.

The departmental officials included: Penrose Albright, assistant secretary for science and technology; David Bolka, director of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA); John Kubricky, director of systems engineering; Maureen McCarthy, director of research and development; and Charles McQueary, undersecretary for science and technology.

In collaboration with the department's information analysis and infrastructure protection directorate, the science and technology directorate plans to hire a program manager to lead a "virtual" cyber-security center of experts nationwide. Funding for the center will be provided in fiscal 2004, with a formal announcement about the manager "very close," the officials said.

The science and technology directorate already has hired Simon Szykman as cyber-security R&D director. On Thursday, Doug Maughan, a former employee at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that served as the model for HSARPA, said he hopes to join the department to head the cyber-security research agenda. Maughan said he would work in the science and technology directorate for HSARPA.

Currently a contractor for Homeland Security who identifies research programs for critical infrastructure and organizes the cyber-security research agenda, he said the directorate is waiting for departmental divisions such as the Coast Guard, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration to define their cyber-security requirements.

McQueary said the nationwide experts will work with the information analysis and infrastructure protection directorate "because that is our job. It's really a collection of experts from around the country that will help us decide what the overall portfolio for cyber security needs to be."

The National Science Foundation and National Institute for Standards and Technology also fund cyber-security research in coordination with the department, McQueary added.

McQueary said Homeland Security should consider incentives to entice the private sector into sharing detailed network-security practices. "Somehow we've got to sort through this and decide how do you get some useful information out of ... private industry since 85 percent of all the infrastructure is in private industry. We've got to draw upon that."

McCarthy, the directorate's research director, said important cyber-security technologies such as the development of "cyber forensics," the tools needed to track perpetrators of cyber attacks, fall within government's purview. But the directorate mostly will look to outsiders for innovation.

"I will not be doing a lot in the cyber world," she said. "Many cyber-security tools and technologies reside in the private sector, and much of the cyber-security portfolio's work will be in engaging academia and industry."

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NSF unveils new cybersecurity research initiative

Ted Leventhal — Wed, 03 Dec 2003 00:00:00 -0500

"NSF's cybersecurity mission primarily is to ensure the health of research enterprises at American universities," said Carl Landwehr, NSF's program director for cyber trust. "We have no mission to protect a particular piece of infrastructure, but this is an area where we need more research and trained people. The research will foster ideas and create the talent pool that is needed."

He noted that the new program allocating $30 million is in part NSF's response to the 2002 act requiring NSF and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to foster new computer-security research. The "cyber trust" R&D program will fund up to three research-center-level collaborations between industry and academia, as well as individual "single investigator" and team awards.

Landwehr said the program is funded partly from the NSF's "trusted computing" program for managing privacy and security and other plans already in place, "and I am reasonably confident we will have the money to spend," he said. NSF officials said the bulk of the $30 million has been allocated, but portions will be contingent on fiscal 2004 appropriations.

Landwehr added that NSF and the Homeland Security Department already are collaborating on cybersecurity research, including a recent grant to the University of Southern California and University of California at Berkeley to create a network test bed to practice defending against computer attacks.

The cyber-trust program is seeking proposals in the areas of fundamental research, multi-disciplinary research, and education and workforce development. All will be subject to the foundation's peer-review process and the availability of funds.

Fundamental research covers cutting-edge technology in trustworthy computing, evaluation and certification methods, efforts to prevent attacks that deny service by bombarding networks with activity, and long-term data-archiving technology.

Multidisciplinary research will cover the social, legal and ethical, and economic compromises that impact the design and operation of secure network systems. Education and workforce development projects will address the training of system operators.

Research center grants require a letter of intent to be submitted by Jan. 23 and an application by March 31. The deadline for single investigators and team proposals is March 3.

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Lawmakers revive fight to get research reports online

Ted Leventhal — Mon, 24 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500

On Friday, Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Jay Inslee, D-Wash., introduced a bill that would codify public access to CRS reports by placing them on the Internet in a public database, a longtime cause of public-interest groups and some members of Congress.

Under the House Administration Committee test program, CRS reports previously were available online through the sites of lawmakers like Shays, but that program expired in September. The new legislation, also co-sponsored by Reps. David Price, D-N.C., and Mark Green, R-Wis., would mandate public access to the reports.

"CRS products are created with taxpayers' dollars, and the taxpayers should have access to the information," Shays said in a statement. "There is no logical reason why this information should be held under lock and key."

The bill, H.R. 3630, would require CRS to make all of its research, unless it is confidential or created specifically for an individual lawmaker or congressional office or committee, available to the public within 30 to 40 days after Congress gets it. Members of Congress and congressional committees would provide access to the database via their Web sites.

In February, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced a related Senate measure, S. Res. 54, that would require the Senate sergeant-at-arms to work with CRS to make the reports available through a central electronic system. The co-sponsors of that resolution are: Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

"The American public paid over $81 million to fund CRS' operations in fiscal year 2002 alone," McCain said at the time. "The informational reports covered by this resolution are not confidential or classified, and the public deserves to have access to them."

Public-interest organizations have been calling for Internet access to the full CRS database for several years. After the pilot program expired in September, concern was raised that access would be limited or curtailed entirely, and a coalition of groups began a letter-writing campaign to Shays and others.

"Under the pilot program, hundreds of reports were available online," said Steven Aftergood, a policy analyst with the Federation of American Scientists. "In September, that policy ended and was replaced by procedure where [lawmakers] could make individual reports available on their Web sites. That prompted a broad-based letter of concern from public-interest groups saying Congress was heading in the wrong direction."

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Federal technology spending expected to grow 4 percent a year

Ted Leventhal — Wed, 19 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500

The group predicts that the total federal IT budget for fiscal 2004 will be $59.3 billion, with $31.4 billion to be spent on civilian agencies. For the next five years, GEIA predicted that total federal IT spending will rise 4.1 percent annually, to $72.5 billion, by fiscal 2009.

GEIA had estimated a higher growth rate of 4.8 percent last year but lowered it after considering a trend toward greater efficiency and consolidation by federal agencies, as well as the negative impact of the federal budget deficit on discretionary funding.

Spending on non-defense IT projects is being driven largely by the needs of the Homeland Security Department, GEIA wrote. The civilian portion of the federal IT budget is expected to grow 3.7 percent annually, reaching $37.6 billion in fiscal 2004.

Defense Department IT spending will be $27.9 billion in fiscal 2004 and grow 4.6 percent annually, to $34.9 billion, by fiscal 2009. GEIA said the U.S. military continues to rely more on technology, a trend that it said is increasing throughout the federal government.

Homeland Security IT spending, meanwhile, should rise from $10.6 billion in fiscal 2004 to $12.7 billion in fiscal 2008, provided there are no other major national security incidents. GEIA noted that many of the department's special projects are headed to the investment review board for approval, so more procurement opportunities should arise next year.

"The words we heard repeatedly during interviews were 'efficiency' and 'consolidation,'" Mary Freeman, director of business development for Verizon Communications' federal markets and GEIA's budget co-chairwoman, said in a statement. "The fact that IT is more than 7 percent of the federal government's total discretionary budget highlights how important these products and services are to agencies as they serve citizens and work to accomplish their missions."

GEIA also predicted that spending on defense electronics would be $76.8 billion for the next fiscal year, growing 1.8 percent per year over the next decade, to $91.9 billion in fiscal 2014. The study predicted that electronics spending by the defense agencies would grow the most.

Modernization of the Air Force and Navy spending on ships and airplanes will drive the spending, with the Army modernizing and transforming its forces through Future Combat Systems acquisitions, GEIA predicted.

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Homeland Security reaches out for small-business contracts

Ted Leventhal — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is limited to U.S. companies with 500 or fewer employees, and the grants will provide $100,000 for six months of research into the scientific, technical and commercial merits behind a concept. If their ideas are successful, recipients of the grants then may apply for two-year, $750,000 awards to develop prototypes.

The department is seeking proposals for applications in information technology, chemical and biological defense, and marine security, including the call for a computer-modeling tool to assess the vulnerability of U.S. infrastructure, new chemical and biological sensors, and a ship-compartment inspection device.

"Our goal with the SBIR program is to benefit from the nation's small businesses in the research and development arena, a critical source of innovation," said Kevin Boshears, director of the department's office of small and disadvantaged business utilization. "Like our small-business procurement program, the SBIR program makes small-business participation part of the department's culture."

Dave McCurdy, president of the Electronic Industries Alliance, welcomed the announcement, but cautioned that small businesses traditionally face costly and time-consuming hurdles within the federal procurement process.

"Doing business with the Department of Homeland Security is a challenge," McCurdy said, noting that businesses with a history of government contracting have a distinct advantage and that usually 18 to 24 months of work are required to establish a relationship with an agency.

"The good news is they are spending money and awarding contracts," McCurdy said. "In the long term, [the process] will pay off" for EIA companies, who he said could provide "real value" to the government.

Lorraine Lavet, the American Economic Association's chief operating officer, said small business interest in the program will depend on whether or not companies will be granted intellectual property protections over their inventions. Lavet said that in the past, SBIR has granted contractors more intellectual property control.

"[SBIR]is a very attractive program," Lavet said. "There are fewer strings attached, and many of our members credit the creation of their businesses around it."

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