Biometrics communityCollaborative social media site for ID and biometric professionals
Cost overruns, project delays, and poor performance results have long been the bane of government projects, at times resulting in expensive high-profile failures; to help reduce costs and ensure that government projects meet targeted needs, a new collaborative Web-based information-sharing community aimed at bringing together identity and biometric industry professionals, academics, researchers, and government and commercial procurement officers is slated to open
Cost overruns, project delays, and poor performance results have long been the bane of government projects, at times resulting in expensive high-profile failures like SBINet, the aborted $1 billion plus program to build a virtual fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
More recently, the troubled Advanced Spectroscopic Portal (ASP) program at DHS was slated to receive an additional $300 million to purchase 400 radiation detecting machines that had not been properly tested, did not function as promised, and cost roughly $822,000 each. The project was eventually cancelled after a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report brought the project’s shortcomings to light.
“As soon as [a company] wins a contract, typically there are excessive change orders and requests, and what ends up happening is you get a program that’s started, but there’s no end in sight. It goes on and on until the project is finally completed or it’s handed over to another contractor,” said Jeff Scott, a twelve year veteran of the identity and biometric industry who has worked in the State Department as well as with major companies like Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
Given the fiscal climate on the Hill and recent project failures, the government procurement and management process for complex projects that take years and millions of dollars to complete appears in need of assistance.
Scott explains that large government contracts are frequently subject to “scope creep” where program changes continue to be added to the project making it larger and more complex resulting in cost overruns and delays.
Instead Scott recommends that government projects should begin with identifying what the needs are and then working with industry to create a solution that addresses those requirements first before adding new capabilities.
To that end, working in conjunction with Tarcom Internet Solutions, Scott is set to launch a new cooperative Web-based information-sharing community aimed at bringing together identity and biometric industry professionals, academics, researchers, and government and commercial procurement officers.
“The whole goal for this site is to get the community talking together in a collaborative way – putting together successful solutions that fit a customer’s needs,” Scott explains.
According to Scott, the site, Globalidentitysolutions.com, will function as a “central repository for knowledge where ID professionals globally can share information and collaborate on information, ideas, thoughts, and solutions.”
The site is designed as an interactive social media platform where users can pool their knowledge, comment on real proposals, offer solutions, and vet potential programs and technology for large biometric identification projects.
Initially the community’s main focus will be on identity solutions, so preliminary topics will include healthcare, biometrics, smartcity, and identity management, but because the site is user driven, topics will be added and grow according to the needs of the community.
Scott envisions that Globalidentitysolutions.com will be a place where “governments or commercial companies can start a group and say, ‘This is what we’re looking at doing, and I want you as an industry to come together and write about what you think the best solutions are.’ Then they can then take all that information and analyze it to determine what is best and then reach out to individuals from specific companies to start forming that solution.”
To help moderate groups and discussions, Scott plans on enlisting the help of handpicked “global ID experts” that will ensure the site’s comments and topics remain pertinent, solution-oriented, and productive.
“Ultimately, this is to get people thinking about the whole solution and how best to put that solution together so we can use it right away for the greater good of whatever the need – whether it be securing a city, securing healthcare initiatives, or finally figuring out interoperability between systems,” he said.
Globalidentitysolutions.com is scheduled to launch in early 2012 with a beta community starting in the next few weeks, but the site is currently open for registration and comments.
