Federal Executive Forum

Border Security

March 6, 2008

Broadcast on WFED 1050 AM Washington, DC and www.FederalNewsRadio.com

Transcript

Moderator

·         Jim Flyzik, The Flyzik Group

Panelists:

·         Greg Giddens, Executive Director, SBI, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), DHS

·         Kathy Kraninger, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Screening Coordination Office, DHS.

·         Luke McCormack, CIO, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), DHS

·         Bob Mocny, Director, US-VISIT Program, DHS

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Today’s show is recorded live at the AFCEA Homeland Security Conference and will focus on Border Security.  During today’s show we will discuss progress being made and future priorities as we move forward to secure our nation’s borders.

Let’s start with Bob and hear about some of the progress that’s been made in the last year. We did a show on this subject a year ago and I know there’s been a lot going on with US-VISIT. Can you give us an idea of some of the highlights of things that have been going on this past year?

BOB MOCNY, US-VISIT, DHS

You mentioned in the opening that we have had some successes with US-VISIT. I believe that’s true. I share that with the many people here in this audience, those here physically and those on the radio as well. I want to take this time to thank you for all the help that you’ve given us.

I like to remind people that the “T” in US-VISIT does stand for “technology”. We would not be where we are if not for the advances in technology. So thank you again for everything you’ve done to help us get to where we are. We are not finished and we are going to talk about this more this morning.

I will take this opportunity this morning to update you on where we are with the program. We have a lot of work ahead of us; our work is not finished. By way of introduction, many of you do know biometrics is at the core of the US-VISIT program. Biometrics was chosen for two basic reasons. There are a lot of people out there in the world trying to get into this country to do us harm. They hide behind that veil of anonymity; they hide behind the name and date of birth indices that here-to-fore can be used to get into a country or get a benefit where they shouldn’t be getting that.

So biometrics makes sure that we don’t let that individual into the country. And of course, the other side of that whole thing is identity theft. We hear about it all the time; people’s identity cards and other identities being stolen. We have basically eliminated Visa fraud through the use of biometrics.

You cannot get a Visa anywhere in the United States consulate embassies and have that Visa used by anybody else. It can’t be lost, it can’t be stolen, and it can’t be given away, because the biometrics makes sure that that individual is the rightful bearer of that Visa or of that passport under the Visa waiver program.

But beyond just the biometrics itself and deploying technology to the ports of entry and helping the Department of State with deployment to their embassies and consulates, we are now a biometrics services organization. We now have an amassed data of over 90 million fingerprints in our data base of good people coming into the US.

We have a watch list of some 3.2 million of known or suspected terrorists, criminals, deported felons. We can use that information now to provide new information to people who didn’t have it just a few years ago. So that services organization -- in addition to a project office deploying technology -- is the way that we’ve evolved over the course of the last couple of years.

And I think, since the last time I was here, there has been a terrific turn of events and that is that we are not alone any longer. We started this in January of 2004 and

we were roundly criticized by a host of individuals, entities and even countries.

But I’m happy to say now that not only are we using biometrics as part of immigration and border management, but Japan just opened their new service on November 20, 2007. Now the UK has been building their biometric Visa program and we have sent an employee to the UK to help them build their biometric program. And the EU has recently announced that they are going to have biometrics as part of their entry and exit program into the EU.

So, whereas in 2004 we were all alone, in 2008 we are now joined by a host of countries and entities that have seen the power of biometrics. In this way sometimes the copying of what we do is one form of success that we measure.

I’ll conclude my remarks here by asking for your help. We have a lot of work to do. We have deployments that we are going to talk about this morning; we have some mobile technology that we are going to be looking at, but perhaps the biggest challenge facing us is the biometric exit, and biometric exit at the land border.

So I’ll leave it with that because that’s going to be an intriguing area for us to deal with. I’m going to need the help in this community and beyond as we move into the future.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great and we are going to come back and talk about challenges and other questions. An interesting thing we heard from Roger Gome yesterday, from Scotland Yard talking about biometrics for the Olympic Games in London in 2012. So you are right, there’s a lot of biometric activity going on.

Kathy, last time a year ago, your office was still relatively new in terms of DHS, yet it had a very strategic focus to be looking across the Department at all the various screening office initiatives ongoing. Can you give us some updates of things that have been going on in screening coordinating in the nation?

KATHY KRANINGER, DHS

Absolutely! It’s a great opportunity for us to get up here in front of all of you and talk about areas where we have made a lot of progress. I certainly think in the last year we have made a lot of progress. But of course this Department is still very new. We are facing our five year anniversary next week, which is pretty exciting for those of us who were plank holders in the beginning of the Department and have seen how far we have really come.

I’m very excited to be talking about a few of those things because when you talk about the Department from a headquarters perspective, my job is very much about looking at how we integrate, how we operate and the way we work together.

And the synergies -- a word I don’t generally use and don’t like, but it’s appropriate in this case-- that we find among the components within the Department; what they can leverage and do with each other and the capability that then results in protecting this country.

So we have seen quite a few things that are worth mentioning. I’m looking forward to talking to a little bit more about this morning.

With respect to my office, as I think I told you last time, I have two kind of sometimes competing but hopefully complimentary goals in mind. One is actually delivering on the promises and pledges that the Secretary has made with respect to programs that are going to better screen out bad people who want to enter this country to harm us.

We have a number of individual programs. Some of the ones Bob already mentioned that are in his arena are also within the portfolio of the screening and coordination office as we look across DHS programs. But on the other side, we are looking at again that integration; how do we set policies at the Department level; and (how do we) put enterprise architecture in place with the CIO’s help; and put that framework in place so that people in the future have a place they want to go to where we are all going to converge in a way that makes sense within the Department.

So a few things on that front; one of those things, as Bob noted, is biometric service. IDENT is really a core system and a core service that provides great capability within DHS and we have that as part of the target architecture for every entity within the Department that is going to collect biometrics for screening purposes, to use that as basically our identity repository.

That does not mean that we are not considering our legal authorities and privacy issues; there are obviously funding issues and a number of things associated with that are within the framework, but when you have that architecture target and you have that capability set up it really provides some great benefits.

A few other things we are working on: we issued a policy on physical security features for credentials. Obviously we have a lot of different credentials that are issued by this Department for different benefits, purposes, and privileges and we put in place a resource for those program managers to look at, the types of things that they should be doing when they are considering issuance of a credential.

And of course we continue to work on the strategic framework for credentialing and taking some of those types of ideas and taking the direction that we are giving to the Department and putting that to paper that program managers can use to develop their plans and their programs and understand the direction of the Department on the policy front.

A number of great program progress points that are worth noting. Certainly Commissioner Basham who spoke this morning talked already about actually moving towards requirements of documents at the land and sea ports of entry. This is hugely forward in many respects.

Certainly it is not a silver bullet, as nothing is in the security world, but this is a step that is long overdue and is a great direction towards actual requirements of secure identification at the borders and deployment of RFID technology, which we’ll talk about in the to do list category.

Certainly, on the international information sharing front, we have made significant progress; certainly on the biometrics front; also on the biographics and intelligence front and in actually sharing travel information to do a lot more and really solidify that net to capture and to recognize terrorist traveling internationally, whether it’s sharing of lost and stolen passport information and (we are) more robustly using that, certainly in the US But that’s a great example (and the) passenger name records agreement that was signed last summer continues to be a corner stone of our  discussions with the EU and with other countries as we look to close that gap on detecting terrorist travel.

One point that’s worth making on the domestic front: At domestic airports TSA has made great progress in looking at how to better use behavior detection at their checkpoints and in airports to detect those whom we may not otherwise see as a threat, certainly watching for hostile intent.

Across the board at DHS we are trying to incorporate that holistically into what we do. Because, at the heart, this is all a risk-based effort and we have to look at the opportunities we have and the way we train our people to look for that type of behavior and TSA has deployed that in full force and to great results.

The last point is the deployment of TWIC and for those of us who have been watching the program develop over the past six years, it is tremendous to see that we now have 125,000 people enrolled as of last week and we have 45,000 cards that have been produced.

This is really the first major deployment of smart card technology (and) with all the planning that’s gone into HSPD-12certainly I can give some kudos to the Department of Defense for the CAC card; this is a major deployment effort that has been a big challenge to the Department and to the program all along. How do we do this? How do we have a distributed system where the cards are actually going to be read by other than the essential entity?

How do we make that work? Obviously we are still working on the reader side of this, but we are deploying cards; we are conducting background checks and we will be doing spot checks at ports as we go on here in the enrollment process. So those are a few highlights.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Greg Giddens, as the Executive Director of the SBI program, you have a few people looking over your shoulder day-to-day; and there is no shortage of newspaper articles talking about things happening on the border. Why don’t you as being the person who’s there and who really knows what is really going on, give us some updates on the last year on the SBI program?

GREG GIDDENS, CBP, DHS

Thanks for organizing all the activities this week to help talk about Border Security -- a key element that really needs the national debate and attention that it’s now getting.

I also want to echo something that Kathy said about the Department and watching its maturity, particularly under Secretary Chertoff’s leadership in terms of integrating the different components.

I have the opportunity to wear two hats in the Department -- one working for CBP and one working for DHS. It’s really heartening to see what US-VISIT is doing and what Kathy’s been able to do to reach across DHS and across the components to really start bringing things together in an integrated way that provides more value for the American tax payer and more security for this nation at the same time.

(And there are the) things that ICE is doing; it’s tremendous what the Department has been able to do in a short time and the way it is coming together over the past couple of years to really add that value and it’s really a blessing and an honor to work in that environment.

I would like to identify and update a little bit about what’s going on in SBI and SBInet within Customs and Border Protection, because frankly if you are getting your sense of what’s happening with the program from the press, you can not be more out than 180 degrees.

It’s tremendous what’s been done; and if you think back from January 2006, it was the first meeting that we really had to focus on what we were terming then “an SBInet solution” to support CBP’s activities between the borders (with the) the right mix of technology, staffing and tactical infrastructure; to go from having the first meeting (where) there’s no mission needs statement from the acquisition community; there’s no operation requirements document; there’s nothing but a meeting and an urgent mission in January 2006.

And to be sitting here today, one month over two years and have awarded a major contract, (to) have fielded -- not on paper -- a demonstration project that can explore the technical concepts to prove that out; (to) have that fielded and it’s now being used.

In fact it’s been used to filter out over 2000 aliens that have tried to enter this country illegally, allowing us to see entries even before they happen so that we can be proactive about our response. To have that fielded, have gone through the structured process of generating operational requirements, have those documents done, and now be developing our first operation configuration that we will field this summer in about two and a half years after the first meeting, I think is tremendous.

I’m telling you I get the articles -- a lot of people send them to me -- I’ve read them all and I struggle with what program that they are writing about.

I would challenge you to look at any major acquisition and see that in two years from the start -- not two years from contract award -- but two years from the start of the first meeting about the program, that they awarded a major contract, fielded a technology demonstration, a prototype that we can learn from, went through the operational requirements process, having the first operational configuration and they are going to deploy it in two and a half years.

I think that’s tremendous. But that doesn’t sell papers, and I think that’s one reason that we don’t read about that a lot. Just as when ICE was able to end catch-and-release back in 2006, it was a tremendous asset to this country in gaining border security.

You didn’t read about that a lot, but I would venture to say that if ICE was not able to do that, you’d have read about it all over the place. But it’s tremendous what things are being done in the Department in the furtherance of Border Security for the country as well as providing value for the taxpayers’ dollars that we never read about.

The Commissioner mentioned tactical infrastructure. We now have over three hundred miles of tactical infrastructure -- pedestrian fence and vehicle fence -- along our borders. It’s been tremendous what has been accomplished through the dedicated folks who are working at DHS and the components. And I’m honored to be here to talk a little bit about that progress.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

And we are happy that we are able to create the kinds of forums and the radio show and the conferences where we can get the understanding of what’s really happening. Yesterday, assistant Secretary Meyers spoke in the morning about ICE and the role of ICE and we have with us Luke McCormack; but first a break.

Break

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

We heard yesterday from the Assistant Secretary.  Luke we understand that the role of ICE is very important when we talk about securing our country and securing the borders. Luke, can you give us some updates on some of the key things you are working on?

LUKE MCCORMACK, ICE, DHS

 I’m going to focus on the progress being made in the IT arena. I think Ms. Meyers did a fantastic job of explaining all that we are doing operationally and of course with all those operations requires quite a bit of IT.

I’ll make some highlights here, first in our Atlas program, for those that don’t know about that, that’s really our infrastructure plumbing if you will. My deputy had spoken about this last year (and) we’ve made quite a bit of progress in that area.

We’ve migrated in to the one net on the networks side and completed that project. We’ve finished off consolidating our email environment. We are in the process of freshening up our desktop hardware; we will have that done in a couple of months.

(We are) working very closely with the Department in the consolidation of the data centers, and moving out of the DOJ data centers into the new DHS data centers. And we have been tapped as the single sign-on steward, if you will, and we are the sign-on environment that we are going to roll across the entire Department.

In the business applications area, as you can imagine, we have every business line from our investigations to our detention and removal, to our federal protective service to our financial systems. Quite frankly, every one of those systems we are in the process of modernizing.

Most of those are in the planning stages right now; we are in the process of doing the planning for the procurement and some cases we’ve had some interaction with the industry on industry days, etc., but we will be rolling out several different procurements through out the year to modernize those areas.

We have done some tactical solutions in place, which frankly have borne fantastic results in the catch-and-release where we put an electronic travel document solution together; (it is a) digital signature where we can transmit over to the consulates.

It’s those things, even though they seem small they take us 90-120 days to build, they yield fantastic results with regard to reducing the amount of time in the bed space, which of course reduces the amount of money, helps with the catch-and- release program.etc.

We are doing a lot of work in the security area. I’m trying to make sure that we are hardening our environment, pushing out classified-type capability across to the ICE field units. But (we are) also making sure that we are hardening all of our existing systems, hardening our existing infrastructure.

And the last thing I wanted to point out is that we are doing an incredible amount of work in the information sharing environment. You are going to hear about this more at the panel that’s coming up next. We are doing a lot of partnering with DOJ, with DNI, and with the state and locals where we’ve got several pilots underway up in Seattle, down in San Diego, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, working with the state and local community in particular on sharing data making sure that we are respecting and protecting the privacy issues and doing it securely, but making sure that we have that kind of capability working very closely with the DOJ and FBI in that environment, (thus) leveraging some of those capabilities and relationships that they’ve already had out there.

The other piece of that of course is that we are working very closely with the partners within DHS, most notably with US-VISIT. On the interoperability project with DOJ, I will tell you for ICE it’s very refreshing  because we are getting some, as folks were describing the maturity, we are really getting the maturity out of the Department with the policy to settle down some of those areas; (there are)  services that are coming out of the US biometrics program with US-VISIT that allow components like ICE, like CBP to build these solutions for our operational folks and not have to build it alone; where we are reusing these types of capabilities and snapping them all together into these environments, which has just been outstanding. It really makes for a win-win and a reuse of a lot of this capability.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I’m going to put together two versions of the next question. Let’s talk about challenges that are yet to overcome and maybe lessons learned; let’s combine those two issues. And I’m always wondering, are the challenges the complexity with the technology; or is it with the coordination, the processes, governance issues; or all of the above from your experiences.

Let’s start with you Greg, do you think some of those challenges that you’ve learned from lessons, can you talk to us a little bit about that?

GREG GIDDENS, CBP, DHS

I tell you the biggest challenge that we have right now is getting out an accurate and complete story about what we are doing. That overshadows any of the technological challenges that we’ve seen.

Frankly when you look at what’s been out in the press -- and I’ll speak plainly about Project 28 -- if you read about what’s been in the press, that it does not fully meet the users’ needs, I want to remind you -- and I mentioned this earlier -- that when we contracted Project 28 we did not have the operational requirements.

We did not take the traditional path that would have allowed us this summer to award a contract. And that would have been the traditional path; work all our requirements, validate, lay all those out, then start a source selection, go through the process, and then pick a vendor.

If we’d have started that in January 2006, we’d be at best awarding a contract this summer. Instead we decided to pick a strategic partner with top-level capabilities and in parallel work the requirements so that we could marry up the technology (and) demonstrate what we have already fielded.

We can marry that with now with the more detailed operational requirements, and now, instead of awarding a contract this summer, we’ll be fielding our first operational configuration. I think that’s a huge difference. You don’t get that though, when you read about this in the paper.

We awarded a contract then established the requirements that we need for the umbrella contract, and then we applied that to the specific task order which is awarded six months before we even had the requirements.

And I think if you just lay out the first part of that and don’t say but, I think it’s being disingenuous. I don’t think it’s being accurate, I don’t think it’s well informing and serving the American public not to really tell the complete story about how this was put together and how it’s moving forward. We are satisfied with P28 as a technology demonstrator that it was intended to be. I don’t think we should gauge it against a bar other than what it was intended and contracted to be.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Very good point. I would argue that sometimes when you go through the whole process of the requirements and you take the two years to get the contract out and a year to award it, it’s a very rare occasion that the first implementation goes exactly right when you go through that process also.

And I think people forget that this all came about as a result of a brand new Department where we were essentially fighting a war against terrorism and we had to do things significantly different.

Bob Mocny, you’ve been with the US-VISIT program some time. What are some of the lessons-learned, the hurdles and challenges that you’ve encountered?

BOB MOCNY, US-VISIT, DHS

One of the biggest challenges for us has been making sure that we are talking publicly about what we are trying to do and making sure that the public understands what it means to use biometrics in our case.

We had a round of criticisms in the early stages about what it meant to fingerprint tourists as they came into the US; and tourism would come to a halt and we would have long lines at the US ports of entry. It wasn’t until a demonstration of that marriage of technology and stakeholder output and public outreach that allowed us to get to the public and say you see it’s really not that bad after all.

And after people went through that process, rather than criticizing us, well it’s really not that bad. Well, I understand, and we’ve stopped over two thousand people based on the biometrics alone. And now the UK’s doing it, and Japan’s doing it and the EU’s doing it, so the initial charge of you are over reacting to 9/11, now people want to get on board that same train.

But that didn’t come without a price. And making sure that we are touching the public in forums like this and reaching out and constantly explaining, explaining, explaining what we are doing. Having done that overcomes a lot of the challenges.

I will say a couple of lessons-learned here: It’s very challenging to not move forward with these programs without leadership at the top. Secretary Ridge in the initial stages launched US-VISIT in a very strong way. We were not doing well with the six people that I had over at INS back in 2001.

When we took over, Kathy called me one day, said send me your resumes, give me all the people who work in your office, all six people, and we are now at 115 plus with some 600 contractors supporting us.

So without that initial vision from Secretary Ridge, we would not be we are. And I have to say with the ten prints. Moving two prints to ten prints was a huge shift and Secretary Chertoff in June of 2005 said -- I believe it was actually here in the Reagan building -- said we are going to chart a new course, and we are going to move from two to ten for all these reasons -- better security, more efficiency.

Without that leadership at the top we would not be where we are today. The State Department has deployed at locations where they issue Visas. We will be at all ports of entry by December 2008 because of that initial leadership and that business setting and that saying “let’s go forward”. Yes, you have to have IPTs, integrated project teams; yes you have to have stakeholder involvement, but I would have to say without a champion at the very beginning, you get nowhere.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Good point. Kathy, what are some of the challenges, hurdles you encounter, lessons learned over the last year as you are trying to take on that role of coordinating across the Department?

KATHY KRANINGER, DHS

Well you will hear a broken record here: communication, communication, communication and everyone knows that in life, it’s certainly not different at DHS.

We are under a microscope, at least in my experience, and I know certainly from others and many of you may echo this. We are just so under a microscope everything that we do and the number of places and ways that we touch the public in particular when we are talking about at airports doing screening at the TSA check point or traveling internationally and seeing CBP’s officers at a port of entry, we do have a very big face to the public.

And everything that we do is noted. Certainly that brings with it any number of challenges, and certainly as we see it, our goal is really to be as clear as possible and to be consistent. The best recent example I have apart from the two that were already mentioned here by Greg and by Bob, is the change in border procedures that was implemented very successfully by CBP.

They deserve extensive credit for that. On January 31 we ended the routine practice of accepting the mere oral assertion of citizenship and identity at land and sea ports of entry. No more can an individual just wave and say I am an American citizen and I am coming home.

Certainly everyone who has crossed the border in the last 7 years knows that we have been gradually moving in that direction anyway. Certainly you have seen changes that have happened at the ports of entry since September 11. But reaching to the public and pointedly taking that on is a communications effort and saying, no really we are serious about this. It is way past the point where we can allow this to continue to happen and not talk about this publicly.

And it is something that the American people understand, but it was certainly something that was not without great controversy and opposition and, as Bob noted, it’s the concern about change and the concern about impact that we share.

But it is this aggressive expectation setting that this is going to be the worst thing that anyone has ever done to impact trade and travel, and I hope that DHS can stand on its record and that the next administration doesn’t face that type of visceral lack of confidence or any faith at all in our ability to execute.

That’s something that I know I feel, I think many of us feel. It is concerning because we do think we are good stewards of the American tax payers’ dollar; we do care about security; we do care about the economic security of this country and those are things that we are challenged to balance every day and certainly the American people expect no less. So I hope that we can overcome that and have a little more confidence in our ability to execute into the future.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great points! You just wonder, any time a new program is announced you hear about all the bad things that could happen with the program as opposed to focusing on the good things. We know we are up against the tough challenge of law enforcement national security needs versus privacy needs and we know there is a balance in that line and I know that every day DHS is trying to walk that fine line to make sure that balance takes place. Luke, you’ve been a CIO now for several years. Some lessons learned and challenges over at ICE?

LUKE MCCORMACK, ICE, DHS

 “I would have written you a shorter letter but I didn’t have the time.” And what I mean by that is: I think (that is what) all the CIOs in the community are constantly facing as we try to integrate all these different environments together. It’s just the timing of the different solutions sets, the different services that are out there.

Who can you partner with versus going alone? When is that going to be ready versus when you need it ready? Can you tilt some of these activities to the right 10 degrees and then hopefully they will line up in one or two years or do you need something in six months?

(We are) trying to take advantage of some of the alignment, some of the architectural things that are underway, some of the technologies that are out there, some of the services that are being built that we want to reuse, and doing it and trying to deal with some of the timing issues, so that’s been a challenge.

Let me back up and say probably another challenge is as we start to work very closely with our operational unit, and frankly, is we didn’t have the best reputation at ICE in the IT arena as far as being able to deliver services timely.

As we started to work on that and have some of those successes I was talking about, the floodgate opened up and the wheelbarrows started showing up with requirements and quite honestly we were struggling to try to deliver some of those solutions.

And, as we started to partner with US-VISIT and started to partner with other folks in the community, that really helped us out as far as being able to provide those capabilities. And I would say probably a lesson learned for us is we didn’t do that outreach and the partnering as early as we could have and lost a little ground there, so there’s a lesson learned for us.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 I want to talk a little bit about the field and getting input back from the field.

Break

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

When we left we talked about challenges and now I’d like to talk a little bit about internally, how do you get the feedback from the agents out in the field?

Those of you running these big programs I would think one of your customers is that field agent who lives this stuff day to day. Luke, do you have ways to get some feedback in from those ICE agents out in the field?

LUKE MCCORMACK, ICE, DHS

We have several ways, but I tell you that’s probably one of our best successes this year is partnering with our operational units. We have special agents and detention removal officers, etc., that are embedded right into our community that work with us on a national scale on gathering some of these requirements for these business applications.

We also have our employees embedded into the operational units out in the field and we did that purposely because we felt like we needed to be right there on the ground and these are not break/fix people, these are people who are out there working side by side with the agents, with the intelligence analysts etc. understanding their operation; (they are) pulling and sifting those requirements out and doing the prototyping and some of these early pilots, so that we can roll these into these larger procurements.

So we have a formal process that we use that traditionally most components are using, but we have an informal but a very tactical on the ground in your face type of an environment where we are getting raw data operationally in the field during these operations.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 Terrific. Kathy, how about in your functions? How do you get input from the field folks?

KATHY KRANINGER, DHS

Primarily we are a headquarters coordination office and we deal with the components that are obviously getting to the field.

One of the things that is critical for the leadership for the Department to do and something the Acting Deputy Secretary Paul Schneider has been doing extensively is pulling a lot of people from headquarters with him and actually getting out there and talking with them.

Go out there and walk the border with the Border Patrol agent. Go down to the federal law enforcement training center, the primary campus, and actually use the training tools so you are sitting there doing the driving school, which is something I got to do a few weeks ago.

See what it is they do, get the opportunity to talk to them in their training environment or in their operations and figure out what it is that they need and get that direct feedback.

The components have that mechanism on a regular basis and they should. We are taking that feedback from them, but at the same time to hear it directly from an agent, that is extremely helpful and bringing them in to participate in some of the planning and organizational efforts at headquarters is something that we have really been trying to do a lot too.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

What a great idea, ask the customer what they need and bring them into the picture. Bob, what are your experiences?

BOB MOCNY, US-VISIT, DHS

Ditto! IPT, integrated project teams, if you can find the people who are going to be affected by the program, or who can affect the program, bring the people together around the table, bring them from the field, bring them from the various disciplines, sit them around the table and talk about what the requirements are, what the effects are going to be, make sure there are no surprises and you will have a better guarantee of success if you bring those people around the table from the very beginning.

It’s so simple. We’ve had great operation from CBP bringing field officers to help design the devices, help design the process so when it gets out to the field, and then we provide training back out to the field, they see the benefits of what they’ve produced and they have some ownership of it and they’ve had the ability to modify, change, and adapt so the IPT process for us works fantastically.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

And I guess you have processes for metrics to get ideas for the actual public that’s using the systems feedback mechanisms to find out how well things are going. And how well things are performing?

BOB MOCNY, US-VISIT, DHS

Absolutely! (We) have to follow up, have to do the customer touch and even the officer touch and say how is it working for you? Just real quick, with the deployment of the fingerprint devices, we put them out there in kind of high booths, so it was hard for people to put their hands up there. And of course all we had to do was bring a little tilt machine there to adjust that so now it’s a lot easier for people to put their hands up as opposed to trying to get high up on the booth.

So some small things, (these are) ergonomic issues that you look at. Talk to the officers. Go out to the field, constantly get their feedback and then adjust accordingly. And we have to be willing to adjust accordingly as well.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

And Greg knowing the kind of men and women that are Border Patrol agents and enforcement officers out there, I’m sure they are not shy about getting feedback to you about things working or not working. Do you have mechanisms in place where you can hear from the field about what works and what doesn’t work, and make adjustments?

GREG GIDDENS, CBP, DHS

 Absolutely! And we even started that during the source selection process, we brought users and operators in during the source selection so they would have insight on the different solutions that were being proffered.

I think that the earlier you start that the better, so we had that in from the very beginning on SBInet; and we’ve continued through on that, we’ve hosted and facilitated workshops to support the operators developing the requirements, bringing the Border Patrol agents, the CBP officers from the office of field ops and air marine because we really have three customers within CBP.

So bringing all of those together and getting their input and having a way to go and adjudicate that and help that drive a solution. Even now in developing that operation configuration, we are having workshops (so) that those users come in and sit side-by-side with the software developers; so that (in) real time we can develop this and tweak this as we build it; so that when it comes out this summer it won’t be a surprise, it will be something that they’ve seen in these workshops and these development activities.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. I want to shift a little bit to the future and the vision for the future. We’ve got about 12 minutes left of our final segment here. So I’m going to ask each of you for a three minute vision of what do you see the important things to be happening over the next several years? Your vision for what we should expect to be seeing in your respective areas. Luke?

LUKE MCCORMACK, ICE, DHS

A year or two from now I see an environment where things like Atlas data centers, desktops, emails are like the air we breathe. That’s just a commodity that we buy. I see us really focusing on the business applications and more importantly building specifically what special components they need and when they need it from an applications standpoint.

And what I mean there is delivering a solution as a full service provider that might not be something that you build yourself; you might be partnering with several different communities, whether it be state and local, whether it be the Department of Homeland Security, other Departments and certainly private industry, but able to provide that to that employee, whether it be mobile, etc., exactly what they need. Not sort of what they need, not kind of what they need, not what we could have given them, should have given them, it’s exactly what they need when they need it.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific! Greg, what should we expect on the SBI program? What’s your vision for what you’d like to see happen over the next couple of years?

GREG GIDDENS, CBP, DHS

 I think you would expect to see continued integration at the Department level from the work that Kathy’s doing and that Bob’s doing, and Luke at ICE and other components, to continue to see that integration that the Secretary has really stressed and has really made great strides in the Department.

From a CBP perspective in terms of border security, I think you’ll continue to see us using all types of technology. We’ve spent a lot of time focusing on a single slice of the SBInet, P28, but it includes the unmanned aerial systems (and) all the work in air marine. It includes the work that OFO is doing, that Border Patrol is doing, bringing all those together (with the) understanding that it’s not a one size fits all as we move forward.

Clearly we want to develop in field operational configuration this summer for SBInet and continue to build out the tactical infrastructure and then be in a position that we can really productionize that (and) we will be in a shape and have the configuration control and then we can apply that to where the operators need it.

What we want to do is be nimble in our planning. I don’t want to sit here in 2008 and lock ourselves in for a location for 2009, we want to have a nimble enough planning that we can look at our operators and put the technology and solutions where they think they need it most.

And we want to do that with continued good oversight. I know that a lot of people have written about Project 28 and it was delayed. You mentioned earlier about the good news, but you never read about the dedicated public servants from the government side that protected the government’s interests and looked at this and said that it does not meet the contract; we managed this in such a way that held Boeing accountable to deliver what they had on contract.

You never hear about those dedicated public servants that worked to protect the interests of the tax payer, you never read about those. And you also don’t read about Boeing, when we told them as their customer that this product’s not ready, that they stood up and took responsibility and said “you are right, and we are going to fix it, and we’ll take responsibility for that”. And I tell you Jim, that’s the kind of strategic partner we need to help secure these borders -- people that will take responsibility and invest for this country’s future.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Good points Greg. And I assume why the focus is on P28, but there’s work going on northern border?

GREG GIDDENS, CBP, DHS

Absolutely! There is work going on on the northern border, on the maritime borders, on the southwest border, there’s work going on on the ground, there’s work going on in the air, there’s work going on to figure out how we can understand what’s going on underneath the ground.

So you are right, we have a north and a south border and a left and a right border; it’s land, it’s airtime, it’s maritime, and it’s complicated. But it’s necessary to gain advances in all of those in order to secure our borders.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Kathy, what’s your vision for the next several years? What do you see as some of the accomplishments and things you’d like to see happen as we go into a new administration, hopefully these initiatives, that bipartisan support and you’ll just continue right ahead. What’s your vision for the future?

KATHY KRANINGER, DHS

I certainly think continued integration is really key to our success and it’s as mundane as what Luke was talking about with migrating data centers.

This is something that might not on the face of it seem that important to many of the people listening on the radio, but the people in the room know how important that is.

We have infrastructure all over the country in different places with different capabilities scattered, and you talk about the backbone of accomplishing information sharing, of getting a common operating picture for the maritime border that the coast guard and the border patrol and the air and marine operations folks all have the same picture at least -- and they can certainly get into details that are pertinent for them -- but from a high level view they have the same operating picture. And that’s something that’s going to provide tremendous capability into the future and is going to bring true integration.

We already see pockets of this and again going out to the field and seeing what’s happening in places like Miami where you have the Coast Guard and CBP and TSA and ICE working in the airport, and the relationship of the airport to the seaport when it comes to cruise line passengers.

They are sitting down on a regular basis and actually putting together joint operations, whether it comes to investigations (on) how that gets carried out to the check point, to the port of entry. These are field folks that need the tools that we here are working to building and give them and continue to improve upon so that they can be successful in those kinds of operations to really further our nation’s security. And so that’s something that we are all here to do and that’s the mission and goal into the future that we are going to see real benefits from.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 I know that integration. People forget and say DHS has been around for five years, why haven’t they integrated everything yet? And you think those other agencies that have been around for hundreds of years that are being pulled into DHS and in many of those agencies things aren’t integrated. It is a monumental effort but it’s good to hear that progress is moving in the right direction. Bob, what’s your vision for the next several years? Things that you’d like to see happen and envision happening over the next years in the US-VISIT program?

BOB MOCNY, US-VISIT, DHS

I think in the next three to five years having ten print deployed to all the ports of entry. You will see the marriage of iris and face to help with a lot of the through put. You are going to see full interoperability with the FBI’s next generation identification system to the state and locals and also to other law enforcement agencies. You will see biometric exit at all of our air and seaports of entry. All foreign nationals will check out and check in using their biometrics in association with the airlines and the airports and working in conjunction with them.

We’ll expand mobile technology. A very successful program with the Coast Guard in the mobile pass biometrics at sea, we’ll soon be upgrading that to assist Greg with his work in the mountains and in the deserts, so mobile technology is going to be expanded greatly.

Shifting all that to the international arena, I spoke about the other countries doing this. We have to get serious about pushing our borders out as we have been doing, but moving that in a cooperative manner with all these other entities, sharing our data as appropriate, and getting their data as well.

So where is the border and where do we keep these individuals at bay. So if I have information about these individuals I want to share that with the UK, I want to share that with Australia, I want to share that with all these other countries that are building their systems so that we can truly keep these people off the planes, off the ships, and away from our borders.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific! Thanks Bob. I’ll make a few concluding comments here before we sign off. First of all we are here at the AFCEA Homeland Security Conference and my first challenge is to everybody who is here to step up to some of the challenges to help these individuals achieve their objectives.

These individuals are working on some of the most critical programs that our country faces today. These are the key people and the purpose of a conference like this is to mobilize support to help these people be successful.