DHS communications do not work with other law enforcement agencies

Seal of the United States Department of Homela...Image via Wikipedia
Washington Times:

Federal law enforcement officers from different agencies soon will be able to talk to each other on their own radios in the Washington area - but the Department of Homeland Security will not be a part of the new system.

The Justice Department this month is rolling out a new state-of-the-art interoperable tactical communications system in the national capital region. Called IWN, for Integrated Wireless Network, the new system addresses long-standing problems with existing legacy radio systems highlighted by communications failures on Sept. 11 and during Hurricane Katrina.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes some of the federal government's largest law enforcement agencies - and which is responsible for leading national efforts on interoperable communications - will not be a part of it, however. Officials said DHS may participate in the system in other parts of the country, but not in the capital area, a decision made in 2007.

DHS was lacking two things that are essential in the federal government for big projects like IWN to succeed, according to a former federal official with close knowledge of the issue, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivities of his current employer.

"You need someone to be in charge and you need a place to put the money," said the former official, "DHS had neither."

The component agencies within DHS, like the Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), each have their own legacy communications systems, and there was no power center in the department that could force them to work together on modernization.

...
This sounds like a failure of leadership by the Secretary of Homeland Security and the President either of who should have been able to force cooperation. The President doesn't have much trouble jerking around oil drillers, but he can't seem to control his own employees.
Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more