CIO Gets US-VISIT Moving

VB: What were some of the challenges in getting the first phase of US-VISIT rolled out last month?

Hastings: It was a very aggressive schedule. We actually didn't get our budget approved and money dropped until mid-September, so that's the time we had to pull the interoperable nature of what we had to do. We deployed 3,000 workstations plus the associated peripherals: cameras, fingerprint-capture devices. When you do that at 115 airports and 14 seaports all over the country...that is quite a challenge.

VB: Who are some of the legacycontractors?

Hastings: They're Lockheed, CSC, and Barton and Associates. SAIC was our testing and integration contractor. We do have [our] major solicitation on the street that we'll award in the spring to take us through the balance of the program, but given the mandatory time frames, we had no option but to use existing technologies and applications. We didn't put [out] a lot of new solicitations for this. [We mostly took] advantage of existing procurement vehicles.

VB: From a technology standpoint, what projects are the department looking at?

Hastings: Obviously, [setting] up information analysis and infrastructure protection; that's intelligence-gathering information. Customs and border protection has a modernization effort, and they are in the first phase, called ACE--the Automated Commercial Environment; CAPPS II and the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] rollout. There's also the consolidation of wireless communications--the Coast Guard's Integrated Deep Water Project. The real challenge we face is consolidating these things and trying to gain some efficiencies and interoperability among what were 22 separate agencies coming together. We're trying to group under things like credentialing, targeting, infrastructure consolidation, alerts and warnings, and consolidated case management.

VB: What would you define as one or two things you would like to see the IT-contractor community change or do differently?

Hastings: To be more aware of how the federal environment has changed. The federal IT shop is a very different proposition than it was five years ago. Right now, a good part of what we do is driven by policy, statute, and by things like privacy--things we didn't think about five or six years ago.

VB: Are you seeing any response to that?

Hastings: I've asked for those things to be embedded in the responses in the US-VISIT RFP, so I'm hopeful that will happen. This will be a real first test.