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Sat 29 Jul, 2006 09:23 am
Homeland contracts oversight deemed poor
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jul 27, 8:28 PM ET
The Homeland Security Department spent $34 billion in its first two years on private contracts that were poorly managed or included significant waste or abuse, a congressional report concluded Thursday.
Faulty airport screening machines, unused mobile homes for hurricane victims and lavish employee office space ?- complete with seven kitchens, a gym and fancy artwork ?- were among 32 contracts on which Homeland Security overspent, the report found.
"The cumulative costs to the taxpayer are enormous," concluded the report, which was prepared for Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who head the House Government Reform Committee.
The House report was a comprehensive study of more than 350 earlier-reported government audits and investigations of Homeland Security contracts between 2003, when the department was created, and 2005.
Still, the broad look found that Homeland Security's procurement spending ballooned from $3.5 billion, on 14,000 contracts, to $10 billion for 63,000 contracts during the two-year period. The report also concluded that half of what the department spent on contracts in 2005 was awarded without full and open competition ?- creating potential waste and mismanagement.
Over the two-year period, spending on noncompetitive contracts jumped from $655 million to $5.5 billion, the report concluded.
Questionable contracts highlighted in the report included:
_$1.2 billion to install and maintain luggage screening equipment at commercial airports that had a high false alarm rate.
_$915 million on nearly 26,000 mobile homes and trailers to house hurricane victims and relief workers ?- none of which could be sent to disaster zones in Louisiana and Mississippi because of prohibitions on their use in flood plains.
-$19 million for Transportation Security Administration office space for 140 employees that includes 12 conference rooms, seven kitchens, a fitness center, and $500,000 worth of artwork and decorative items.
Homeland Security chief procurement officer Elaine Duke told the House Government Reform Committee that part of the problem stemmed from a lack of department officers to oversee the contracts. In 2004, congressional investigators concluded that each procurement employee was responsible for overseeing an average of $101 million worth of contracts.
"Balancing the appropriate number of DHS contracting officials with the growth of DHS contracting requirements has been a challenge," Duke said in written testimony to the committee.
She said department has since begun recruiting and hiring additional procurement officers.
Dept. of Homeland Security struggles to oversee spending
Department of Homeland Security struggles to oversee spending
By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers
7/28/06
WASHINGTON - Nearly a year after it began doling out billions of dollars in contracts for recovery from Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security still lacks a comprehensive computer system to oversee the spending, the agency's inspector general reported Friday.
Internal auditors found that the agency's chief procurement officer resorted to setting up a makeshift system to track billions of dollars in contracts, despite federal requirements that all contracting data be submitted within three days to a centralized federal system.
The stopgap system of spreadsheets, drawn from various agency divisions' contract-writing systems, resulted in unreliable information being given to the public, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and the White House, the auditors said.
In one week last January, the procurement office reported $6.8 million in purchase card transactions, when $25.9 million was actually spent, the auditors reported. They said that other contracts were misidentified, and $777 million in spending was counted twice.
The audit came out one day after a bipartisan congressional report criticized the sprawling, three-year-old agency for massive waste, abuse and mismanagement in contracts covering everything from border patrol to aviation security. The House Government Reform Committee's review of 350 watchdog reports by government auditors and investigators identified 32 agency contracts worth a combined $34.3 billion that were marred by abuse or mismanagement.
The House panel also said that, as agency contract spending spiraled from $3.5 billion in fiscal 2003 to $10 billion two years later, the percentage of contracts awarded without full competitive bidding jumped from 19 percent to 35 percent.
Disaster relief spending in the aftermath of Katrina is sure to push the contract figures higher. Through last March 31, the Department of Homeland Security had awarded 3,457 contracts worth $5.4 billion in response to the hurricane devastation in three Gulf Coast states and, especially, the city of New Orleans, the office of Inspector General Richard Skinner reported recently.
His latest audit said that, despite federal regulations requiring that all contract data be entered into the Federal Procurement Data System within three days, only two Homeland Security procurement offices were linked to the system. The Transportation Security Administration, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center weren't hooked to the central system or even to a department-wide computerized procurement system, it said.
Department spokesman Larry Orluskie said the agency already has begun implementing most of the recommendations.
"The department's procurement system strives for data accuracy," he said.
The auditors also scolded the department's procurement office on two other counts. They said it had failed to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before choosing an agency-wide computer system to track contracting, and it failed to take adequate security measures to protect the confidentiality of computerized contracting data.
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