brought to my attention by the ever watchful Bruce Schneier

DHS releases Secure Border RFP

By Alice Lipowicz

The long-awaited request for proposals for Secure Border Initiative-Net was released today by the Homeland Security Department, which is calling the project the “most comprehensive effort in the nation’s history” to gain control of the borders.

The 144-page document outlines the purpose and scope of the border surveillance technology program, which supplements other efforts to control the border and enforce immigration laws.

“Adding agents at the border is insufficient unless we also can give them the technology they need and unless we contain and remove the aliens they catch,” states the work statement drawn up by Customs and Border patrol. Under the contract, the system must detect entries when they occur, identify the entries, classify the level of threat for the entry, and “effectively and efficiently respond to the entry,” the statement said.

The SBI-Net contract will be indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity with performance-based task and delivery orders. It will be for a three-year base period with three one-year options.

The request for proposals was initially scheduled to be released March 31.

At the same time, the department expects to meet a congressional request to prepare an overall strategy for immigration policy enforcement and border security by the end of April. Once the strategy is complete, the agency in June will begin to create an operational plan with supporting metrics, Gregory Giddens, SBI-Net program manager told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security on April 6. It should all be done by September, when DHS intends to award the SBI-Net contract, he said.

“We have been charged with creating a strategy … but it does not stop there,” Giddens said. “We have to take that strategy and turn that into programs, and tasks, and metrics and milestones, so that we can have accountability.” Through that, he said, the agency will create a framework “that allows us to, collectively, make well-informed investment and policy decisions.”

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full at Washington Technology