Report: Improve measures to assess building security centers

The Homeland Security Department division that offers security for federal buildings has inadequate measures to evaluate the performance of its officer dispatch hubs, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

The report, issued Tuesday, said Federal Protective Service MegaCenters, which monitor building security and dispatch agency enforcement officers from hubs in Michigan, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Maryland, lack measures for efficiency, including how long it takes to dispatch an officer after an alarm is activated.

FPS and the contract guards it hires are responsible for protecting more than 8,300 federal buildings. When an alarm sounds in any building guarded by FPS, a MegaCenter is notified and an operator then contacts the agency in charge of the building, local first responders and FPS police officers and contract guards. In fiscal 2006, the centers received $23.5 million in funding.

The GAO report stated that FPS has measures to evaluate its officers -- just not for all of the MegaCenters' operations. The report recommended that FPS officials create a performance measure for MegaCenters directly "linked to the FPS-wide response time measure [that] covers the scope of the MegaCenters' operation, from alarm to dispatch." The agency also was directed to routinely monitor the dispatch hubs' performance.

The Homeland Security Department, in a September response to the GAO report, stated that officials at FPS and its parent agency, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, have undertaken a review of MegaCenters to determine ways to evaluate performance.

"We recognize that there have been several studies and evaluations of MegaCenter technology that have identified the need for technology upgrades," wrote Steven Pecinovsky of DHS' GAO liaison office. "ICE officials anticipate that the current assessment will have a meaningful impact on FPS technology capabilities."

A source familiar with FPS' operations, who asked to remain anonymous, said the agency should be careful to develop reasonable measures.

In fairness to the MegaCenter operator and responding officer alike, the source said, response times should be evaluated in part based on the conditions faced by responders. If FPS' Colorado MegaCenter, for example, sees an alarm has been activated 60 miles away from any FPS branch in Los Angeles - a city notorious for traffic backups - and sends an officer to that scene, running into rush-hour traffic would throw off response time results, the source said.