Homeland Security research agency has lofty vision

The Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) is unfairly compared to the Defense Department's well-established, futuristic idea factory of a similar name but has hopes of ambitious achievements of its own someday, according to HSARPA's director.

"HSARPA is a little bit of an unfortunate title for us because it makes everybody think of" the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), "and we really aren't," HSARPA Director David Bolka said in a recent interview. He added that only about 10 percent of his agency's work is comparable to that of DARPA.

DARPA was created in 1958 as a first response to the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite. Its mission has led it to play a critical role in the development of such technologies as the Internet. Congress created HSARPA as a homeland security analog.

Asked whether HSARPA will generate technologies that could transform society like DARPA has, Bolka said, "I'm sure there will technological spin-offs that we can't forecast right now" that could have a "significant impact" on society. He noted that the first DARPA director likely could not have predicted the impact that agency has had, either.

Bolka gave hypothetical examples of societal benefits emerging in medication and disease detection. For instance, "it may be that our [pathogen and chemical] detector work turns into a personalized exposure detector so people know when they've been exposed to flu," he said.

There are other obvious differences between DARPA and HSARPA. For instance, DARPA's budget averages about $80 billion per year, while HSARPA's first full budget for fiscal 2004 is less than $1 billion. Another difference is the way HSARPA will conduct research on the mining of information in databases for security reasons.

Also, the Homeland Security Department's science and technology directorate, where HSARPA resides, currently is focusing about 90 percent of its resources on immediate problems. Bolka said the dedication of 10 percent of HSARPA's efforts to forward-looking research will change, probably in four or five years.

But he said he might not be around to see it if everything goes as planned. "I don't believe I'm going to be the director when we start spending a large amount of money on the forward-looking stuff, and there are better people in this country to dream the future dream," he said.

"I've given myself somewhere around three or four [years]," Bolka added. "I retired twice and might want to retire again some day. This is my third startup, and I like startups."

Before joining Homeland Security, Bolka, a Navy retiree, held various senior positions at Lucent Technologies and worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories and Naval Sea Systems Command.

"I see my job here as establishing HSARPA, putting in place the processes and procedures and people and programs that will start it off, making it robust, making it sustainable, making it extensible," he said. "Organizationally, that's sometimes very difficult, but I think if you start with those goals in mind, you end up with something similar to DARPA."