OMB freezes tech projects at homeland security agencies

The Office of Management and Budget has frozen funds for information technology projects at agencies slated to move to the proposed Homeland Security Department pending a White House review of homeland security IT investments.

The freeze, announced in a Friday memorandum to the heads of the affected agencies from OMB Director Mitch Daniels, affects new IT infrastructure projects worth more than $500,000 at agencies scheduled to move to the new department. The move halts major IT acquisitions at the Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard and Immigration and Naturalization Service. The order doesn't apply to noninfrastructure projects, which would include modernization of databases or computers or agencywide technology upgrade plans, such as one at the Customs Service.

OMB acted now to prevent redundant IT spending and begin the work of integrating IT systems at the potential homeland security agencies, Daniels said in the memo.

"Clearly, an integrated and universal IT system would provide the best support for homeland security," he said. "For this reason, existing investments should be assessed…prior to procuring new IT infrastructure-related products and services." Consolidating systems could save between $100 million and $200 million over the next two years, he added.

In a briefing with reporters Friday afternoon, Mark Forman, the Office of Management and Budget's associate director for information technology and e-government, characterized the consolidation as a step toward a more technologically unified Homeland Security Department. "This gets on the path of a more modern, better integrated infrastructure," he said. "Our clear goal here is to take advantage of what's deployed so far," Forman said. "How we get there…how soon we get there is the heart of a lot of the work that has to be done."

The freeze only applies to projects that are slated for the fiscal 2002 and 2003 budget cycles. Projects that were underway before will not be halted, but Forman indicated that they might be modified in the future. "Longer term, we're going to be integrating together the redundant initiatives," he said. OMB and the Office of Homeland Security will chair a review group to evaluate homeland security IT purchases. The group includes chief information officers from the TSA, Coast Guard, INS, Customs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Treasury, State, and Justice Departments. First on the group's agenda will likely be the TSA's $1 billion IT services contract, which was scheduled to be awarded July 25.

TSA had planned to build its technology infrastructure essentially from scratch rather than utilize existing assets elsewhere in the Transportation Department. Forman couldn't say whether that approach has been scrapped at TSA, but he emphasized that the review team will look "across the components" of the homeland security agencies and leverage existing technology systems wherever they might be. TSA would not comment on the OMB memo on Friday.

Forman said the review board would use the Homeland Security Department's technology design plan as a guide when deciding which projects to consolidate. The Office of Homeland Security and OMB are still crafting that plan, and Forman said the review team would add to it.

The freeze also affects the Coast Guard's national distress system project and the INS' ATLAS upgrade, an initiative to improve the agency's overall IT infrastructure. Among other things, ATLAS aims to modernize the INS' system for tracking foreigners. The Coast Guard's Deepwater project, designed to upgrade equipment used for offshore missions, is not affected by the order.

Affected agencies must submit information on their IT infrastructure to the review group by Aug. 15.