The Light Is Green: Failed IT Projects (Part 3): Boeing and U.S. Homeland Security

wooden fence I recently came across ZDNet's outlook on what they feel are the biggest three IT project failures in history.

Whether they are or not, the point is that even the largest, best organized companies and institutions can find insurmountable hurdles in a software project.

So, moving along, here's the biggest IT disaster project in this ongoing series from ZDNet...

Failed IT Project #1:

Boeing and U.S. Homeland Security

Or... the $30 billion dollar high-tech fence

The widely publicized "virtual fence" project being built by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing the Mexican border via a high-tech network of cameras, lighting, sensors, and other technology, has hit some snags.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Boeing Co. has changed the management of an electronic-surveillance project along the U.S.-Mexican border after falling more than two months behind schedule, marking the complications involved in setting up a new generation of border security.

The project, part of a larger Department of Homeland Security program called SBInet, is a critical link in the plan to use technology to monitor the borders for illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and possible terrorists. Towers set up along a stretch of the border near Nogales, Ariz., are supposed to use motion sensors, cameras and radar to keep track of wide areas. According to the government, Boeing has had trouble getting the different components to work together without glitches.

The government’s plans for monitoring as much as 6,000 miles of the Canadian and Mexican borders hinge on towers such as these working properly. If they prove ineffective, officials could be forced to spend billions of dollars for more traditional security measures, such as fences and more officers. The Homeland Security Department currently estimates that the virtual fence will cost about $8 billion through 2013, although the agency’s inspector general wrote last November that the cost could balloon to $30 billion.

Also see this article by Joseph Richey, of the Nation Institute, which funds investigative journalism:

In Washington, U.S. Congressional representatives are already bristling at the skyrocketing costs of SBInet. Since Boeing won the contract last year, the estimated cost of securing the southwest border has gone from $2.5 billion to an estimated $8 billion just a few months later. When Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter asked SBInet Director Giddens for the real costs at a February 2007 hearing of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, Giddens replied: “I wish I could answer that with greater clarity.”

At the same Congressional hearings, Boeing vice president and SBInet program manager, Jerry McElwee, took heat from Congressman William Lacy Clay who demanded information about the ballooning costs and the extension of the contract period. “You bid on these contracts and then you come back and say, ‘Oh we need more time. It costs more than twice as much.’ Are you gaming the taxpayers here? Or gaming DHS?” the Missouri Democrat asked.