Homeland security officials eye new goods, TSA contract

The agencies that would move into the proposed Homeland Security Department are anticipating an information technology spending spree, and they've got their eyes on tools to improve border security, analyze data about terrorism and coordinate emergency responses to terrorist attacks, according to a senior official at the Office of Homeland Security.

Speaking at a luncheon Tuesday in Northern Virginia, Jim Flyzik, the former Treasury Department chief information officer now assigned to the Office of Homeland Security, told technology executives from dozens of federal contractors that the new department would become a major consumer of information technology goods and services. It would mean a boom in business for technology companies, he said.

At the top of agencies' purchasing lists, Flyzik said, would be technologies that directly enhance the mission of the proposed department, which covers border security, countermeasures to weapons of mass destruction, coordination of emergency responders and the analysis of intelligence. Software to "mine," or sift through and analyze data, and route it to the agencies that could best use it will be among the top purchases, he said. Also, equipment to verify identity, such as biometric readers that scan fingerprints or retinas, will be in demand since they'll play a key role in increased security efforts, Flyzik said.

In a videotaped message, Vance Hitch, the Justice Department CIO, said security agencies would deploy biometrics technologies on an "unprecedented" scale. The Justice Department's Immigration and Naturalization Service, which protects U.S. borders, would be moved into the new department. The FBI would not be moved, though officials there have said the bureau and the Homeland Security Department would work hand-in-hand. FBI Director Robert Mueller has said the bureau wants to buy new data mining and analysis technologies.

Flyzik said security agencies also would buy collaboration software to let them share information electronically; computer applications that create maps and three-dimensional models to better coordinate emergency responses; simulation and computerized modeling programs to help predict attacks; and wireless communications devices to let police, fire and other emergency response workers talk with one another simultaneously, something they couldn't do last Sept. 11 after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

While homeland security will drive the government's biggest technology spending plan in five years, Flyzik noted that the money hasn't arrived just yet. The president's fiscal 2003 budget, which Congress hasn't passed, calls for approximately $52 billion in IT spending, an increase of more than 15 percent over the previous year.

While some firms profited from government purchases made with emergency supplemental funds immediately after last year's attacks, most companies have spent the time since then setting up homeland security sales and marketing divisions to reap the bounty of next year's budget. At the same time, the Office of Management and Budget is trying to consolidate overlapping technology projects in the security agencies, which could lead to some existing contracts being shut down, Flyzik said.

Now that agencies have identified some of what they want to buy, they'll have to find a way to buy it. There have been few new procurements for homeland security-related technology in the past year, but the biggest of them all has caught the attention of security agencies. The Transportation Security Administration last month awarded $245 million in work to Unisys Corp. under a contract to create a telecommunications and technology infrastructure managed by the private sector. More than $1 billion could eventually be awarded under that contract, called the Information Technology Managed Services program, which Flyzik endorsed as an effective way to farm out government work to private corporations.

The TSA contract lets vendors develop plans for meeting the agency's goals, rather than asking the agency to come up with a list of requirements that companies then fulfill. Acquisition Solutions Inc., a consulting firm in Chantilly, Va., developed the concept for TSA. The firm's executives are pushing the method as an overall acquisition strategy for the Homeland Security Department. Flyzik said that the TSA contract could serve as a model for the department when it buys technology goods and services.

"The TSA vehicle…is the way to do things," Flyzik said.