Coast Guard modernization plan veers off course

A 20-year, multibillion-dollar program to overhaul the Coast Guard's traditional assets is sailing off the charted course, a government official told Congress Wednesday.

"We estimate that to return the program to its original 20-year completion schedule will cost about $2.2 billion more than the Coast Guard estimated when the program was implemented in 2002," said Margaret Wrightson, director of homeland security and justice issues for the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

She made the comments during a Senate Commerce Oceans, Fisheries and Coast Guard Subcommittee hearing on the Coast Guard's fiscal 2005 budget.

In prepared testimony, Wrightson said fiscal 2004 funding and the fiscal 2005 request would give the Deepwater acquisition program an extra $46 million more than planned for the first four years.

The Coast Guard in June 2002 signed the Deepwater contract with Integrated Coast Guard Systems to develop an integrated system of ships, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and computer and surveillance logistics.

Since 2002, Congress has appropriated $1.5 billion for the program, and Coast Guard officials told GAO it would need more money -- $795 million annually adjusted for inflation -- to get back on the 20-year track. Adm. Thomas Collins, the Coast Guard's commandant, told a House panel last month that by the end of the summer new procedures would keep the program more stable for at least the next five years.

GAO also found that the Coast Guard's second-largest procurement program -- Rescue 21, which would replace the agency's antiquated communications system and at an estimated cost of $953 million -- has encountered delays due to software integration problems.

Wrightson said Coast Guard officials are unsure whether they will complete the program at the end of 2006, but they do not anticipate additional costs. The system would allow officials to digitally call on distressed boaters, among other activities.

A GAO report on Rescue 21 released last September said that since early 2003, the Coast Guard had been postponing formal qualification testing and subsequent testing. It also warned officials that the system might not work as specified because the agency had been compressing and overlapping schedules for testing the technologies.

The total Coast Guard budget proposal for fiscal 2005 budget is $7.5 billion, an 8 percent increase over fiscal 2004. An estimated 90 percent of the money is earmarked for homeland security efforts the agency acquired when it was transferred to the Homeland Security Department.

One of those initiatives is an automated identification system to track vessels entering and leaving the United States. GAO's testimony did not focus on the program, but the Coast Guard received $24 million last year to deploy the technology to U.S. ports over the next three years. An agency spokeswoman said nine facilities at various locations would have the system by the end of 2004.

Wrightson said in an interview after her testimony on Wednesday that GAO is investigating the program for the full Commerce Committee.