BioWatchQuestions raised about cost, reliability of BioWatch upgrade
One year ago, DHS said a new contract for Biowatch, a system for detecting biological attacks on the United States, would be awarded in May 2012 and would cost an estimated $3.1 billion during its initial five years of operation; now DHS has decided to postpone the plans due to concerns about cost and reliability
BioWatch program faces questions of cost, effectiveness // Source: hepimizaileyiz.com
One year ago, DHS said a new contract for Biowatch, a system for detecting biological attacks on the United States, would be awarded in May 2012 and would cost an estimated $3.1 billion during its initial five years of operation.
Now DHS has decided to postpone the plans due to concerns about cost and reliability. The Los Angeles Times reports that a 3-sentence posting released to a government Web site said the department was shifting the time frame for soliciting final proposals to late in the year. The posting provided no further explanation.
Scientists familiar with the matter have said that the decision reflects a lack of confidence in the new technology, known as generation 3.
The program has cost about $1 billion so far and the ranking member on theHouse Homeland Security Committee, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) as well as Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, have sent separate inquiries to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano asking for documents on BioWatch, citing shortcomings within the system as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
A hearing is scheduled for late next week to discuss BioWatch and a recent review of Generation 3, BioWatch’s latest technology, by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Representative Gus Bilirakis (R-Florida) cited the multibillion dollar investment in Generation 3, calling it “one of the most costly plans at the Department of Homeland Security.”
“We must ensure that the development and procurement of the next generation of BioWatch is based on sound science and that we are getting an appropriate return on our investment,” Bilirakis told the LA Times.
BioWatch has experienced problems in the system in the past.
According to the Times, at least fifty-six false alarms have occurred; including one which threatened to disrupt the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Also, owing to the insufficient sensitivity of BioWatch, the system would be unlikely to detect an actual attack. Tests in the lab and in the field of the Generation 3 prototypes have suggested that BioWatch could not be relied on to detect an attack.
BioWatch was once praised for its possibilities as well as the Generation 3 program.
In 2007, Jay Cohen, a DHS undersecretary appointed by former president George W. Bush, told a House committee that the Generation 3 would be “four times cheaper to operate” than the existing system. Cohen went on to say that BioWatch would be expanded its present coverage from thirty cities to fifty.
On 29 March 2012, Dr. Alexander Garza, DHS chief medical officer, told a House subcommittee that Generation 3 was “imperative to saving thousands of lives.”
Garza will be one of three witnesses scheduled to testify at the hearing next week, according to a spokesman for the panel.
BioWatch works by having technicians, once a day, year-round, collect a filter form each BioWatch air-sampling unit and deliver it to a local public health lab, which searches for the DNA of anthrax as well as other pathogens targeted by BioWatch.
