Legislator urges extra oversight of TSA contract management

A House lawmaker on Wednesday said a new Government Accountability Office report on Transportation Security Administration contract management highlights the need for further congressional oversight of the agency.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation, said additional hearings on TSA's bomb detection systems may be needed in light of the report issued Monday. The review said the agency's contracts for those systems have been mismanaged, potentially allowing a contractor to reap more than it should have.

"This is just a little chip of a larger iceberg," Mica told Government Executive. "I wouldn't be surprised if there were overpayments."

In June, Mica ripped the failure rates of TSA's explosives detection systems, calling them "potentially disastrous."

There is no indication that in its handling of the various systems -- whose costs from fiscal years 2002 through 2007 exceed $900 million for maintenance alone -- TSA is checking data it receives from contractors to make sure the technology it bought works according to the agreed-upon standards, the GAO report said.

The report cited a contract the agency has with Boeing, which resulted in bonuses for the company "without any evaluation of [its] performance." A previous contract with Boeing failed to factor in upkeep costs for individual machines, GAO said.

The report called for TSA to recoup from Boeing any excessive payments -- a recommendation the agency and company agreed upon in principle -- and to report relevant details to congressional committees. When asked if Boeing had identified any overpayments that the report said were possible, company spokesman Fernando Vivanco said he was not aware of any.

"TSA does not have a sound estimate of maintenance costs for all the years the machines are expected to be in operation," the report said.

TSA has two kinds of systems, the Explosives Detection System and the Explosives Trace Detection system. The report criticized the financial management of both, stating the agency has failed to establish a timeline for the average life cycle of machines. This lack of understanding of how long a machine should remain in operation is partly to blame for the high maintenance costs, the report said.

Detection machine contractors give TSA reports with measurements of efficiency, or "mean downtime." But the agency does not have to document its receipt of these reviews, because its internal policies do not require that, GAO said.

The reviewers recommended that TSA change its policies to require documented monitoring of the detection machines.

TSA officials did not respond to requests for comment.