Homeland Security Will Fuel IT Spending

More than $2.1 billion will be spent this fiscal year on IT for the new Homeland Security Department, according to an analysis by market-research firm Input. Congress voted this week to establish the department; total spending is expected to top $37 billion during fiscal year 2003, which began Oct. 1.

In addition, the analysis says, the legislation establishing the department sets aside some $12 million for pilot IT projects in areas such as law enforcement and public health, as well as about $8 million to fully develop a homeland security enterprise architecture to guide future development. "To successfully achieve their goals, the department must come to an agreement on the integration of agencywide technologies," Erik TerHaar, Input's manager of federal database services, said Wednesday.

At an IT conference earlier this month, top Homeland Security IT officials outlined the first steps the government will take to bring together the 22 agencies that will comprise the department.

Establishing an E-mail directory and Web portals would be among the department's first IT activities, Steve Cooper, CIO of the White House homeland security office, told attendees at the Industry Advisory Council conference in Hershey, Pa. "Things can be done with IT to help the new organization brand itself as a single, stronger entity," he said.

Another top priority: getting the back-office IT functions of the merged agencies to work in concert so the new department can operate efficiently, says Rose Parkes, CIO of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, one of the agencies to join the new department.

At an Input conference last month, Jim Flyzik, a senior IT adviser to Homeland Security director Tom Ridge, said the four main project initiatives the department will tackle during a yearlong transition period include consolidating the criminal and terrorist watch list into one comprehensive list, deploying the department portal, setting up secure videoconferencing and Web conferencing, and enabling secure Internet communication to facilitate information sharing among federal, state, and local authorities.

Flyzik says the department must agree on interagency technologies, including the ability to link existing databases and upgrading outdated and incompatible wireless technology.

Merging the 17,000 employees and 22 agencies into a single department is a daunting task that could five to 10 years to complete, says James Champy, chairman of Perot Systems' consulting practice. "Faced with the complexity you have, you must step back, look at the pieces, and determine where are the leverage points"--areas where the new department can best unify systems and processes--"and then drive like heck and focus," Champy told Cooper at this month's conference in Hershey. "If you can do that, you can pull along the rest of the enterprise in five to 10 years."