Debbie Schlussel: A Legit Anti-Gonzales Grievance: DOJ Wasted $200M on Failed Post-9/11 Communication System
With all of the pontificating and lecturing Democrats are engaging in against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, they're missing his real areas of incompetence.
The latest is a $5 billion interagency communications system that the Department of Justice was supposed to develop, but didn't. Remember all of the info that came out since 9/11 exposing the lack of communication between federal agencies regarding terrorists--an unfortunate fact that stopped us from stopping the 9/11 attacks?
Gonzales (and John Ashcroft, before him) and his agency were charged with developing a wireless communications system that would allow agents from the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security to communicate across agency lines. It was to be called Integrated Wireless Network (IWN). But despite the fancy name and a whopping $5 billion that was going to be spent developing the system, the whole thing is a total failure. And $200 million in tax money has, so far, been wasted on it, with zero results, according to DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine, in a report he issued, yesterday.
Besides identifying the huge waste of money, the report says this failure could:
affect the safety of (federal) law enforcement officers [because existing systems have] limited functionality, diminished voice quality and weak security, making them vulnerable to hacking.Failure of the IWN project would represent a significant missed opportunity to achieve needed communications interoperability among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Yup, almost 6 years after 9/11, agencies still aren't communicating too well, and the incompetents assigned to the task haven't done the job that plenty of technology companies do quite well.
But you know how it goes: What you do well (or even with mediocrity), government does . . . worst.
Read the full report.
Posted by Debbie on March 27, 2007 05:49 PM to Debbie Schlussel