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COUNTERTERRORISM TECHNOLOGY: PICKING

WINNERS AND LOSERS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 29, 2003

Serial No. 108–114

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS BELL, Texas

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

PETER SIRH, Staff Director

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Deputy Staff Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHILIP M. SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DAN BURTON, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

TOM LANTOS, California

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

CHRIS BELL, Texas

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. HALLORAN, Staff Director and Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Clerk

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on September 29, 2003 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Jakub, Michael A., Director of Technical Programs, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State; Edward McCallum,

Director, Combating Terrorism Technology Support Office, Department

of Defense; Dr. David Bolka, Director, Homeland Security Advanced

Research Projects Agency, Department of Homeland Security ................. 5

Patel, Gordhan, president, JP Laboratories, Middlesex, NJ; Jack Sawicki,

Director of Business Development, Geomet Technologies, LLC, Germantown, MD; Lee F. Sword, program manager, Military Systems Division,

Irobot Corp., Burlington, MA; Richard Mastronardi, vice president of

product management, American Science and Engineering, Inc., Billerica, MA; Bruce deGrazia, chairman, Homeland Security Industries

Association, Washington, DC; Kenneth P. Ducey, president, Markland

Technologies, Inc., Ridgefield, CT; and Laurence D. Bory, vice president, Federal Government Relations, HDR, Inc., Orlando, FL ................. 69

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Bolka, Dr. David, Director, Homeland Security Advanced Research

Projects Agency, Department of Homeland Security:

Information concerning inventory ............................................................ 65

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 45

Bory, Laurence D., vice president, Federal Government Relations, HDR,

Inc., Orlando, FL, prepared statement of ................................................... 136

deGrazia, Bruce, chairman, Homeland Security Industries Association,

Washington, DC, prepared statement of ..................................................... 114

Ducey, Kenneth P., president, Markland Technologies, Inc., Ridgefield,

CT, prepared statement of ........................................................................... 129

Jakub, Michael A., Director of Technical Programs, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 10

Mastronardi, Richard, vice president of product management, American

Science and Engineering, Inc., Billerica, MA, prepared statement of ...... 105

McCallum, Edward, Director, Combating Terrorism Technology Support

Office, Department of Defense, prepared statement of .............................. 18

Patel, Gordhan, president, JP Laboratories, Middlesex, NJ, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 71

Sawicki, Jack, Director of Business Development, Geomet Technologies,

LLC, Germantown, MD, prepared statement of ......................................... 90

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 3

Sword, Lee F., program manager, Military Systems Division, Irobot

Corp., Burlington, MA, prepared statement of ........................................... 97

(1)

COUNTERTERRORISM TECHNOLOGY: PICKING

WINNERS AND LOSERS

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2003

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING

THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays and Tierney.

Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and counsel;

Robert A. Briggs, clerk; Joseph McGowan, detailee; Mary Holloway,

intern; David Rapallo, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority

assistant clerk.

Mr. SHAYS. The Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging

Threats and International Relations hearing entitled,

‘‘Counterterrorism Technology: Picking Winners and Losers,’’ is

called to order.

The emergence of terrorism as a threat to domestic security laid

bare our myriad vulnerabilities, but also unleashed a tidal wave of

national scientific ingenuity and creativity.

Long before September 11, government, businesses, and individuals pursued development of new technologies to strengthen homeland defenses. Research labs, defense contractors, Members of Congress and others have been inundated with proposals for everything from satellite monitoring cargo containers to individual radiation detectors.

What happens to all those ideas? Who is responsible for sorting

through that mountain of paper, sifting wheat from chaff, and

making sure only the best concepts move forward to prototype and

the marketplace.

In the past, we found duplication and the lack of coordination in

Federal counterterrorism research and development programs. Testimony before this subcommittee in March 2000, described overlapping, unfocused chemical and biological defense research programs

in the Department of Defense, the Defense Advanced Research

Projects Agency, the Department of Energy labs, and the Department of Justice.

We also heard about an established interagency forum for evaluation and rapid prototyping of counterterrorism technologies,

called the Technical Support Working Group [TSWG].

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Now, to that already crowded field, add the Department of

Homeland Security [DHS], which Congress charged to act as both

the developer and clearinghouse for innovative technologies.

Today, we focus on the TSWG process, their performance, or its

performance, and its potential role with DHS in channeling the torrent of homeland security technologies into a coherent stream.

In terms of process, the working group relies on Broad Area Announcements to sweep the technological horizon for proposals. The

subgroups of interested agency representatives and experts use

streamlined formats to speed evaluation of the responses. Projects

meeting specific requirements have been nurtured and brought

quickly to production.

In the near term, DHS will use the Technical Support Working

Group process to develop a substantial volume of annual funding

for prototype technologies, but DHS officials concede they are establishing similar and overlapping capabilities within their organization, so we asked TSWG participants, both government agencies

and private sector innovators, to assess the past and potential of

the working group in establishing and implementing governmentwide priorities for homeland security technologies.

We thank all our witnesses for their time and expertise, and we

look forward to their testimony.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. At this time, let me just recognize our first panel,

and then I’ll swear them in.

We have Mr. Michael Jakub, Director of Technical Programs, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State.

We have Mr. Edward McCallum, Director, Combating Terrorism

Technology Support Office, Department of Defense.

We also have Mr. David Bolka, Director of HSARPA, which is?

Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, right

below. It’s Doctor, I’m sorry, from the Department of Homeland Security.

At this time, gentlemen, if you would stand, we’ll swear you in

and we’ll proceed.

If there is anyone else that you may want to testify, or respond

to questions?

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. We’ll start with you, Mr. Jakub.

Thank you very much, and what we’re going to do is allow you

to speak 5 minutes and then roll over another 5. I would prefer you

not take 10, but I don’t want you to feel rushed in your 5 minutes.

With these mics you need to get pretty close to them, and you also

need to make sure they’re on.

That’s not close enough. I’m sorry. You’re going to have to move

it right in front.

There we go.

STATEMENTS OF MICHAEL A. JAKUB, DIRECTOR OF TECHNICAL PROGRAMS, OFFICE OF THE COORDINATOR FOR

COUNTERTERRORISM, DEPARTMENT OF STATE; EDWARD

McCALLUM, DIRECTOR, COMBATING TERRORISM TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT OFFICE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; DR.

DAVID BOLKA, DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF

HOMELAND SECURITY

Mr. JAKUB. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify today on the National Combating Terrorism Research and Development Program, which is carried out by the

interagency Technical Support Working Group.

As you know, I’m accompanied today by Mr. Edward McCallum,

from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special

Operations and Low Intensity Conflict; and in the future, I’ll just

say SOLIC so everybody knows what we’re talking about, and by

Mr. David Bolka from the Department of Homeland Security.

Before I start, Ambassador Black, the Coordinator for

Counterterrorism at the State Department sends his regards to you

and to other members of the subcommittee. He notes that he wanted to be here today, but he has a schedule conflict and he’s currently traveling overseas.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m told that you’re a better replacement; is that

right?

Mr. JAKUB. My boss is here, so we’ll have to put that into the——

Mr. SHAYS. OK, as long as you know what you’re talking about.

Mr. JAKUB. With your permission, we wanted to submit a slightly revised statement for the record.

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I’m going to be talking to you today and trying to put the TSWG

into a broad perspective for you. The other presentations, I think,

will narrow it down a little further, but by approaching it in this

manner, you’re going to get a feel for the entire program.

The hearings come at a very good time. They come at a time of

daily reminders of the terrorist threat, and I don’t want to go into

a lot about the terrorist threat, but we need to put this in a better

perspective because you’re going to hear us—at TSWG, hear us

talk about a threat-driven, requirements-based program; and everything we do derives from the nature of the threat that we are

facing today as a country.

Just a couple points I want to make. The terrorist threat is

spreading geographically. There is no geographic area that is immune from this type of threat. September 11, the events of September 11, brought the events home to the continental United States.

Bali, which occurred last October, demonstrates that no area, no

matter how idyllic, is immune to the threat of international terrorism.

Second, terrorist capabilities and especially their technical capabilities are growing and increasing. Terrorists have demonstrated

they can acquire sophisticated weapons like the SA–7 that they attempted to use last year in Mombasa. They get these either from

State sponsored support or the black market, and they also get

training from various State sponsors.

Terrorists are also sharing information on technical expertise, for

example, specifically in areas of improvised explosive devices, explosive mixtures, detonating systems and the like. Information

from the cookbooks and the computer files that were seized in Afghanistan are, as we have found out, in the hands of other terrorist

groups. There’s also a preoccupation by some terrorist groups today

with chemical, biological, and radiological materials and toxic industrial chemicals.

The arrests in the United Kingdom and France earlier this year

and in Italy last year demonstrate this current preoccupation.

Thankfully, those attacks were thwarted before any real damage

could have been carried out, but they are a possible harbinger of

things to come, and they are things that those of us working in

technology development need to keep uppermost in our minds. We

need to be aware of the evolving nature of the terrorist threat.

In terms of the U.S. response, Mr. Chairman, the United States

and its allies have been working hard to prevent terrorist attacks

through a variety of means. We highlight a number of those in the

written statement. The one I want to focus on today, though, is our

effort to rapidly develop and apply technology to meet the challenges posed by terrorists.

Specifically, our challenge is to provide a coherent and consistent

context for technology development based on the threat, technical

innovation, real operator needs, and proven procedures and tactics.

Simply put, the TSWG philosophy is to try to ‘‘get ahead of the

curve.’’ We want to try and anticipate future weapons and tactics

that may be used by terrorists and develop good countermeasures

to defeat terrorist capabilities and, at the same time, enhance the

counterterrorism capabilities of the United States and its allies.

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We provided in the written statement a pretty detailed description of how the TSWG program came to be and its funding sources.

I don’t want to review that here in detail with you, but I do want

to make a couple points.

Counterterrorism R&D was one of the key issues addressed in

1986 in the Vice President’s Task Force Report on Combating Terrorism. That was chaired by then-Vice President Bush. The task

force recommended the formation of an interdepartmental mechanism to coordinate a national R&D program aimed at filling the

gaps in existing R&D and trying to prevent duplication of efforts.

State, and specifically my office, was assigned responsibility for developing and coordinating this effort, and to accomplish that task,

we formed the TSWG, which has existed since that time.

Initial funding for TSWG was centered in the State budget. However, by the early 1990’s, it came to be recognized in Congress,

within the administration, within all the departments at that time,

that if that funding and if that program was going to grow, it was

going to have to have funding contributions from a lot of other

agencies besides the Department. In response, the DOD acknowledged the importance of the program and formally established a

dedicated funding line beginning in fiscal year 1992 to support the

TSWG and the national program. From that date until today, both

State and Defense annually contribute what we call core funding

for the program with DOD providing the ‘‘lion’s share’’ of those core

funds. Other departments and agencies, however, also contribute

funds based on their interests, their needs, and the degree to which

our national program is addressing their specific requirements.

Our current organization for TSWG is relatively simple and

straightforward. It demonstrates both the TSWG’s interdepartmental approach and our focus on developing technology in those

critical functional areas necessary to have a well-rounded

counterterrorism program.

You should have an attachment with our statement up there

which gives you a line or block chart. You might want to refer to

that just for a second.

TSWG is a jointly administered effort with Defense. My office,

the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, provides policy

oversight and overall program direction through our chairmanship.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to ask you to suspend. You want us to refer

to what?

Mr. JAKUB. There should be an attachment there, sir, which

gives you a line of—yes, sir. That’s it.

Mr. SHAYS. Do we have that?

OK. Thank you.

Mr. JAKUB. If you take a look at that chart, you’ll see that the

program is a jointly administered effort with Defense; and my office, the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, provides

policy oversight and overall program direction through our chairmanship of the TSWG’s executive committee. We also contribute

core funds to the program. OASD/SOLIC provides technical oversight, executes and administers the program on a daily basis

through what is called the Combating Terrorism Technology Support Office and also contributes the lion’s share of core funding for

the program.

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If you refer to all the blocks across the bottom of the chart, those

are our functional subgroups. Ten Federal departments and a number of Federal agencies, representing over 80 elements of the Federal Government, participate in those functional subworking

groups. This is where requirements are generated and proposals

are evaluated. Mr. McCallum is going to explain this in a lot more

detail in a few minutes.

In addition to Federal elements, we have extended membership

invitations to selected State and local organizations and to some

congressional elements as well. For example, the Capitol Police, the

Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Office of the Architect of the

Capitol also participate on several of the TSWG’s subworking

groups. We like to hear the requirements from the Hill as well as

those from Federal departments.

Most recently, we reached agreement with the new Department

of Homeland Security to join the TSWG. As a result, the TSWG

will implement, with the support of DHS, those rapid prototyping

and development technology requirements of interest to that department, many of which are also of interest to other departments

and agencies as well. DHS has also agreed to contribute funding

to the TSWG to assist in the program.

Our program focuses on advanced technology development activities to meet the near-term counterterrorism and antiterrorism technology and equipment needs of the Federal community. Specifically, we support U.S. diplomatic, intelligence, security, law enforcement, the military, and the first responder communities.

I won’t go into examples of all the successes that we have had,

but if you remember the threat I talked a bit about just at the beginning of this presentation, we mentioned terrorist interest in

CBR materials. Two of our more recent projects have been the escape masks which have also been issued to Members of Congress

and are being bought, right now, by other departments; and more

recently we have produced and are disseminating now a low-cost

dosimeter badge designed to give the wearer an immediate indication of exposure to a radiological source.

Now, those are just two examples describing how our program is

contributing to the global war on terrorism. There are some others

which, because of time and of classification, I can’t discuss in an

open forum. You should be aware, however, that some of the equipment that’s being used today by our military forces and intelligence

forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as equipment being used

right now to provide antiterrorism force protection for our embassies and for our military bases, both home and abroad, were developed by the TSWG program. We can provide you more examples

that you may be interested in.

One other aspect of our program is that we also have developed

cooperative R&D agreements with three selected NATO and major

non-NATO allies. This is done to assist in helping us accomplish

our objectives. Thus, we can leverage our own funding. These working arrangements are with Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom. Successfully completed projects result in equipment that we

both—both we and our partners—have jointly developed and are

employing, and in a written statement, I give you some examples.

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I don’t want to dwell on them here. There are a lot of others, as

well.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, we believe the TSWG program is

a valuable arrow in the national quiver for countering the evolving

terrorism threat. We’d like to expand the program by adding a few

more foreign partners who have demonstrated R&D capabilities in

counterterrorism technologies, who share our views on the threat,

have an appropriate interagency focus in their technical development activities and are willing to pay their fair share in joint technology development.

When combined with other R&D programs for combating terrorism, for example, those that are going to be developed in the Department of Homeland Security as well as existing ones in DOD,

the Intel Community, the FBI, and other agencies, we believe we’re

making real progress in addressing the technical nature of the terrorist threat.

Those are us who work in the TSWG program are very proud of

its accomplishments. Our guiding goal here is to put enhanced and

usable technical capability into the hands of those involved on a

daily basis in conducting the global war on terrorism, and we believe we’re achieving that goal. We believe our ability to be successful is derived from our current business practices, which are based

on a requirements-driven process, featuring extensive information

exchange with both the user and developer communities. We’re also

mindful and thankful for the dedication and hard work of all the

men and women who are part of the TSWG family.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jakub follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. McCallum.

Mr. MCCALLUM. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the

committee. I’m Edward McCallum, Director of the DOD Combating

Terrorism Technology Support Office, the office that manages the

affairs of the Technical Support Working Group, which I’ll call the

TSWG from now on, as most other people do, and the Military Explosive Ordnance Disposal Low-Intensity Conflict program.

Mr. Jakub has artfully described the history and heritage of the

TSWG, so my oral testimony will emphasize the organization, some

of the business processes that he spoke of, and a few selected successes. We have for your display an easel board with some charts.

Now, there are eye charts for all of us, and for you, too, but we

will refer to some pages in the written testimony that also include

those charts.

As Mr. Jakub stated, our mission is to conduct the National

Interagency Research and Development Program for Combating

Terrorism.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. McCallum, this chart is also available for us. Is

it in the——

Mr. MCCALLUM. I’ll get to the chart in just a moment, but this

chart is displayed on page 3 of the written testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. OK.

Mr. MCCALLUM. The TSWG carries out its mission by providing

technologies to support both Armed Forces overseas, who are bringing the fight to the enemy, and first responders at home. TSWGdeveloped technologies are not proprietary to a single or particular

user base, but frequently have applications to warfighters and first

responders. Our technologies are being used for offensive

warfighting operations and for defensive measures at home. Sensors and detectors assist in preventing incidents, while other technologies help mitigate the consequences of these actions or attribute culpability for these incidents when they occur.

The organization of the TSWG includes representatives from over

80 Federal organizations, and although the eye chart is difficult to

read, it really shows the expanse of participants, and that’s displayed on page 3 of the written testimony for your review. It

crosses the depth and width of the Federal Government from Agriculture to Defense to all of the other Homeland Security elements

including DHS.

Departments and agencies, including representatives from our

first responder end-user communities, such as firemen, policemen,

HAZMAT, bomb squads, participate in nine of these subgroups.

The organization is displayed in the second easel chart and also on

page 2 of the testimony. It’s the same organization that Mr. Jakub

displayed before you, but I wanted to go for just a moment across

the bottom. He described the management oversight process, but if

you take a look at the chart, you will see a broad representation

of Federal agencies who chair these subgroups.

Below those single-letter agencies are represented about 300 individual operators, scientists, and engineers from across the Federal Government and our first responder community who come to

the table to describe their requirements and to help us shepherd

them through the entire procurement process.

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We believe we operate under a highly successful integrated business model, and we’ll display it on a third easel chart, which is

available on page 4, and I’ll speak for just a moment to that chart.

As Mr. Jakub mentioned, we start the year in January with a

‘‘Threat Day’’ where members of the intelligence and law enforcement community come before our 300—approximately 300 members and describe to them what the threat situation is in real-day

terms; and that—not only the threat, but they help us define and

prioritize requirements for the upcoming year. The requirements

definition/prioritization by ultimate users assures that R&D products produced by TSWG’s rapid prototyping program will ultimately enter the marketplace or military acquisition process.

It’s followed, just before the 12 o’clock and where you see BAA

for Broad Agency Announcement, by advanced annual program

briefing industry, where we brief prospective vendors on requirements and invite their industry comments and clarification. This

process helps assure that what we get from industry meets our specific, posted requirements.

TSWG utilizes a three-step process for managing this process as

depicted on the right-hand side of the chart. We first ask for a onepage quad chart from industry. We ask for that in order to minimize their expense and to maximize our ability to review their proposals and get them out to the community. We recognize that the

preparation of good proposals requires a substantial amount of

time and money from industry, and it manages the selection process through the stages of quad charts, white papers and final proposals.

The success rate for final proposals is always above 80 percent,

and sometimes it gets up to 90 percent. The entire process of posting requirements and informing proposals on how to apply and the

evaluation is done electronically through a Broad Agency Announcement electronic commerce system, which we call a BIDS,

which is the Broad Agency Announcement Information Delivery

System, and it’s available on our Web site at www.bids.tswg.gov.

The process is aimed at putting prototypes into the hands of

users within approximately 24 months. A few years ago, we used

to talk 18 months. The process has gotten a little larger and slightly more involved, and in the last years we sometimes have given

products to our users, particularly within the military front within

days, but much of the low hanging fruit has been picked in this endeavor.

In the written testimony, we’ve given you a dozen or so successes

which are in the hands of users and which we’ve delivered in the

last year or so. In addition to that, I just wanted to bring one hard

piece here.

We’ve been attempting to develop technology which is handheld,

so that first responders, whether they’re HAZMAT teams or military units, can have it in their pockets or their rucksacks and carry

it usefully. One of our providers this year developed for us a heat

stress calculator, which has been very popular in both the military

community and the Justice Department for first responders.

We’ve also read and some of us have experienced how uncomfortable full chemical outfits can be, particularly when under any kind

of heat stress, and in fact, in Southeast Asia I lost more troops to

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heat stress than I did to either disease or enemy fire. This calculator, within about 1 minute can tell you what a person in any of

these conditions, in various heat and various humidity conditions

and work load—you know, how long they can normally endure; and

it is being looked at by firemen and military users.

And one that I did want to bring to your attention—and we have

copies here for you—is a Best Practices and Guidelines for Mass

Personnel Decontamination. A few years ago, when the B’nai B’rith

was threatened here in Washington, DC, and we saw scenes of civilians being run between some—a couple of fire department hose

trucks, it occurred to us that the procedures that had been developed for military people wouldn’t necessarily fit for this, you know,

Capitol Building or people around the world, so we set out to develop a Best Practices and Guidelines. It encompasses not just

science and evidence-based practices, but also best business practices and science practices. It was developed by the United States,

the U.K., and Canada.

In closing, I’d like to cite what I believe to be distinctive about

our Technical Support Working Group accomplishments. They represent real problems to real solutions encountered by key participants on the war on terrorism. They represent and meet real requirements of the war ascribed by end-users, and their transition

to general use is assured by the fact that end-users have been part

of the TSWG process from inception to ultimate product consumption.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. McCallum follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Bolka.

Dr. BOLKA. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the

subcommittee——

Mr. SHAYS. Doctor, could I have you just move that mic a little

closer to you?

Dr. BOLKA. A little closer?

Mr. SHAYS. Yes, it helps.

Dr. BOLKA. Is that better?

Mr. SHAYS. Much better.

Dr. BOLKA. Thank you.

I am Dr. David F. Bolka, Director of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency [HSARPA], we wish we had a

better acronym, but we don’t.

I’m pleased to appear before you this afternoon to discuss our relationship with the Technical Support Working Group [TSWG]. In

your letter you ask several questions about this relationship. I

trust that my testimony, in combination with that of Mr. McCallum

and Mr. Jakub, addresses all of them.

As you know, HSARPA was created by the Homeland Security

Act of 2002. The responsibilities of the Director are specified in

that act. Paraphrasing in the area of research and development we

support both basic and applied homeland security research to promote revolutionary changes. That’s about 10 to 15 percent of our

budget in the technology to promote homeland security. We advance the development, testing and evaluation, and deployment of

critical technologies and also we have a prototyping, rapid prototyping mission, and that’s the third part of our mission.

This is the one area where our mission and that of the TSWG

overlap the most. Many of our DHS user agencies have worked

with TSWG in the past and continue to do so. Mr. McCallum has

described some of the technology that TSWG has brought forward

for them. I don’t see this overlap and rapid prototyping responsibilities as either debilitating or wasteful. There is sufficient work for

all of us to develop these technologies.

As Mr. McCallum described, in 2003, while HSARPA was being

organized and hiring staff, we provided funds for a combined DHS/

TSWG Broad Area Announcement that was issued on May 14,

2003. This BAA listed 51 top priority research and technology

needs that we share with TSWG.

DHS staff members have participated in working groups with

TSWG and have helped evaluate many of the quad charts and

white papers that were submitted in response. We also participated

in evaluating the proposals that result from this solicitation, and

our requirements were incorporated in the solicitation. We’re represented currently on the executive committee by my Deputy Director, Dr. Jane Alexander, and in several working groups by S&T

staff members and other DHS members.

Last Tuesday, HSARPA issued its first research announcement

for detection systems for biological and chemical countermeasures.

This announcement begins our work on the next generation of biological and chemical sensors and systems. The research announcement solicits white papers leading to proposals from industry, academia, and laboratories in five technical topic areas, two biological

43

and three chemical. We are using TSWG’S established BID system

to publish the research announcements, to electronically register

those who respond, to collect their white papers and to distribute

them to technical reviewers.

This morning we held a bidders’ conference here in Washington

to provide detailed information to potential bidders. There were

somewhat over 300 people who attended that bidders’ conference.

In HSARPA we have an approved staffing plan that will see

staffing to about 50 percent of the authorized scientific and technical head count early in 2004, reaching about 100 percent by late

summer. We receive legal, security, facilities, and administrative

support from our DHS Management Directorate. Our first contracting officer and attorney have been assigned. Also, I have seven

technical/scientific professionals on board at this point.

As HSARPA develops its own capability to solicit the country’s

best technical ideas, concepts, technologies, and systems, we will

rely less on the TSWG infrastructure and more on our own. It’s

worth noting that our development involves not only creating the

ability to solicit and evaluate, but the simultaneous capability to

execute high-quality research and to execute programs as we proceed.

For fiscal year 2004, just under 25 percent of the HSARPA budgets will be expended in rapid prototyping. We expect that TSWG

will perform this function with us in the near term with our participation. In a statement before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security last April 10, DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology, Dr. Charles McQueary, said the

Science and Technology Directorate would establish a partnership

with the Technical Support Working Group. We have done that.

To implement that partnership, DHS requested $30 million in

fiscal year 2004 to solicit near-term capabilities that can be rapidly

prototyped and fielded, but Congress has increased this funding to

$75 million in the fiscal 2004 appropriation. That’s why the percentage of our budget for private prototyping has gone from roughly 10 percent to about 25 percent.

As HSARPA matures and the Systems Engineering and Development branch of the S&T Directorate staffs up, we will assume the

majority of rapid prototyping responsibility and we’ll coordinate it

internally with our S&T developments. We will continue to fund

TSWG to perform rapid prototyping work when it is mutually beneficial.

Over the next few months, we will continue to refine and will

document our working relationships with the TSWG. Our intent is

to fulfill the clear intent of the establishing legislation and to execute the full scope of HSARPA functions as rapidly as staff and facilities can be assembled. We believe that TSWG experience and facilities can help us achieve that goal in the near term, and under

any foreseeable circumstances, we will retain our position on the

TSWG executive board to collaborate, share information, join in

mutually interesting developments, avoid unnecessary development

44

duplication, and derive mutual benefit from our continuing association.

Subject to any questions you may have, Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Bolka follows:]

45

46

47

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Mr. SHAYS. I thank you very much.

In making reference to the Technical Support Working Group, I

referred to it as TSWG and my staff director said, It’s TSWG, and

I said, ‘‘No grown man would say those words.’’ and now you make

me feel very comfortable; I’ll be the fourth to do it. That’s what

we’ve been referring to it as for the last 10 years?

Dr. BOLKA. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Let me just take care of some business first and recognize that

Mr. Tierney is here and I thank him very much. It gives me the

opportunity to ask unanimous consent that all members of the committee be permitted to place an open statement in the record and

the record remain open for 3 days for that purpose.

Without objection, so ordered.

I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted

to include their written statements in the record, and without objection, so ordered.

I’d like to start out with Dr. Bolka, and just have me be comfortable with what we’ve done with the Department of Homeland

Security.

We basically established the Department with 185,000-plus folks.

This was the committee that had the responsibility for reorganization, and I was very comfortable in supporting that. It had basically four legs to this operation. It had the Under Secretary of

Science and Technology, Under Secretary of Information Analysis

and Infrastructure Protection, and then another Under Secretary

for Border and Transportation Security and finally the Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response. I feel like these

tables are much different sizes here. Obviously, Border and Transportation Security is a pretty huge part of DHS.

How many employees work under Science and Technology?

Dr. BOLKA. I don’t know, Mr. Chairman, but I will find out

and——

Mr. SHAYS. How many work under your particular part of that?

Dr. BOLKA. In Science and Technology, we have an authorization

of 180 end strength.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Under Science and Technology, total?

Dr. BOLKA. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s what I meant, but we’re now under HS—your

particular area—in HSARPA.

Dr. BOLKA. I have a staffing plan which will get me to approximately 135 staff, 62 of which are government, and the rest would

be support contractors.

Mr. SHAYS. And that’s out of a total amount, within this directorate, of how many?

Dr. BOLKA. About 108 government employees. I’d have about a

third of them.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, going on to you, Mr. Jakub and Mr. McCallum,

I am trying to think about the hearing we had way back in March

2000, and putting in perspective today, since obviously a lot’s happened since then, with September 11.

I don’t quite have a grasp of—TSWG is basically in the Department of Defense, but it is under the jurisdiction of the Department

of State?

49

Mr. JAKUB. TSWG, as I mentioned——

Mr. SHAYS. Trying to confuse me?

Mr. JAKUB. TSWG, as I mentioned during the testimony, came

as a result of a finding that was in the Vice President’S Task Force

Report. The Department of State was asked to take on that job.

Mr. SHAYS. And that’s in 1980, 1989?

Mr. JAKUB. 1986.

Mr. SHAYS. 1986?

Mr. JAKUB. Yes. We exercise program direction and policy oversight over the program. It’s executed by the Department of Defense, so it’s a joint State-Defense effort. That was done deliberately so we wouldn’t have to create another extra bureaucracy

within the State Department to handle this, and that’s how it came

about.

Mr. SHAYS. So is it funded out of DOD?

Mr. JAKUB. It’s funded out of both. Both of us contribute money

to what we call ‘‘core funding.’’

Mr. SHAYS. Then who ultimately is in charge? I’m not clear, as

to my knowledge of who ultimately is in charge.

Mr. JAKUB. Who ultimately is in charge for program direction

and overall policy oversight of the program is my boss, Ambassador

Black, the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Mr. O’Connell, who is

the Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low-Intensity

Conflict, is in charge of program execution.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. And if there’s a disagreement between the two,

who trumps whom?

Mr. JAKUB. We haven’t ever gotten to that point, to be very honest with you. It’s been run from Day One and we have never run

into that problem.

Mr. SHAYS. When I looked at the number of folks involved, I had

this sense that Department of Homeland Security was going to be

basically the one that evaluated any proposals that would impact

the Department of Homeland Security. But I’m obviously wrong, so

Dr. Bolka, tell me how it works.

Dr. BOLKA. My understanding, Mr. Chairman, is, and my experience in the previous BAA is, that members of Homeland Security

user groups, and in my case, members of—technical members of

my staff, participate in the evaluation of the quad charts, the white

papers, and the proposals. They also meet, as you saw in Mr.

McCallum’s chart, to set requirements; and so our requirements

are incorporated with the other requirements to ensure that they’re

all addressed and there is no duplication. Then, once the program

has been executed, the results are reported to all those who are

participating.

Mr. SHAYS. But basically the proposals go to TSWG; they don’t

go to you?

Dr. BOLKA. If that’s the mechanism that we set out, that’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t understand if.

Dr. BOLKA. OK.

Mr. SHAYS. In other words, it hasn’t been decided?

Dr. BOLKA. No. In the case of the BAA that we had last summer,

the proposals did go to TSWG. We sent the money to TSWG, and

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TSWG will be executing the programs that result from the proposals.

In the case of our recent research announcement, which we held

a bidders’ conference for today, we are using the TSWG infrastructure to collect the white papers and to assign for evaluation those

that come in prior to selecting them. In this case, my program

managers will be running the programs that result from this.

There will be full visibility for all of the members of TSWG as to

what we’re doing, so there will be no—little duplication, if possible.

Mr. SHAYS. Maybe I’ll understand it better this way.

Dr. BOLKA. OK.

Mr. SHAYS. Why didn’t we put TSWG under the Department of

Homeland Security?

Maybe Mr. Jakub, Mr. McCallum, you can tell me why we didn’t.

Mr. MCCALLUM. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman.

As I mentioned in my brief testimony, a subset of what we do

in combating terrorism is involved in homeland defense and the defense of items and facilities and personnel within the domestic

United States.

Another large part of what we do is in support of the offensive

war on terrorism overseas, in support of the State Department and

the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense.

The technologies that you’ll see and talk about in a few moments,

like the chem-bio suits in front of you, can easily be used by soldiers on the battlefield or HAZMAT teams in St. Louis. The robots

that you’ll see demonstrated are used by military explosive ordnance disposal teams to address the improvised disposal device, devices we’re seeing used in the Middle East or by teams that your

own Capitol Police use, systems that we develop.

The technology isn’t specific to a stovepipe of users or an item

turf. We develop technologies for all users; and within our subgroups, they are all represented and they take the parts that they

need to fulfill their missions back to their home organizations,

whether it’s the Department of Defense, the Department of State

or the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, you have nine subgroups, correct?

Mr. MCCALLUM. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. How many people—I’m trying to visualize, and

they come from all these various departments.

Maybe I need to be clear: How many do you have on your staff

under TSWG?

Mr. MCCALLUM. I have approximately 70 people today, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. And is that a full complement?

Mr. MCCALLUM. That’s a full complement. That’s approximately

20 program managers, scientists, engineers, and operators, approximately 20 contracting and security support people from DOD,

and the rest are support contract people from specific technical organizations that we need to support.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Jakub, how many people do you have in yours?

Mr. JAKUB. Two.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Now, do you work out of the State Department?

Mr. JAKUB. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. You’re at the Pentagon, Mr. McCallum?

51

Mr. MCCALLUM. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. And, when you have your meetings, you’re meeting—

I’m trying to visualize—I understand and I appreciate that obviously the research that’s going to happen is going to impact both

foreign and domestic. It can impact the military; it can impact so

many different folks that obviously, in that way, I can see why it

wouldn’t be under the Department of Homeland Security. But I’m

just having a little bit of a difficult time trying to visualize how it

works in practice.

Do people go to the Pentagon? Do you have periodic meetings

with each of these nine subgroups? Just walk me through that a

little bit.

Mr. MCCALLUM. Actually, our offices are in Crystal Gateway

North, just across the parking lot from the Pentagon.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. MCCALLUM. And we have a series of offices.

Mr. SHAYS. Does that make it easier—excuse me for interrupting,

but does that make it easier for people to access you?

Mr. MCCALLUM. It’s much easier to get into our office than it is

the Pentagon.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. MCCALLUM. It’s right off the Metro. We host a number of

meetings.

As I said, we have requirements meetings during the year when

all of the subgroup members—and there are approximately 300

members, but if I just talk our Chemical, Biological, Radiological,

and Nuclear Countermeasures Subgroup, the last subgroup meeting I sat in on had approximately 40 people from across the government contributing to the requirements process and voting up or

down on different proposals.

The discussion is on a technical basis. It’s on—we also look at

how many agencies these technologies will benefit. If there is a single agency it’s going to benefit, we usually ask them to fund it out

of their core budgets. If it’s multiple agencies, because we have an

interagency role, it moves up the line, so we talk to funding organizations and make sure that the highest priorities in R&D are accomplished.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, how do you guarantee or feel comfortable about

the different departments that come with their own perspective,

that ultimately—in this process of deciding, is it a formal vote? Is

it?

Mr. MCCALLUM. Yes, it is.

Mr. SHAYS. How do you know that it’s weighted in a way that’s

going to bring the best benefit to the United States?

For instance, let me ask, while you think how to respond to me—

Dr. Bolka, I would think the Department of Homeland Security

would be in most of those different subcategories?

Dr. BOLKA. All of those that apply to homeland security.

Mr. SHAYS. Chemical and biological, explosives, infrastructure

protection, personnel protection, physical security, tactical operations.

Tell me. If you don’t know, would you tell me—would you get the

answer to this question? How many people—are you so new that

you’re not yet integrated?

52

Dr. BOLKA. I’m sorry?

Mr. SHAYS. Are you so new that you’re not yet integrated in each

of these subgroups?

Dr. BOLKA. Our DHS components have been integrated for some

time; for example, Immigration, TSA, Border Security and so on

have been integrated for some time.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Dr. BOLKA. Before even DHS existed. Those relationships continue. Really, the only new player is the DHS Science and Technology, and we’re in the process of becoming integrated, right now.

Mr. SHAYS. OK, Mr. Tierney, you have the floor.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. I’ll be coming around for another round.

I did have a question to you, Mr. McCallum.

Do you have an answer to that?

Mr. MCCALLUM. DHS has——

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to ask you to talk a little louder. Your mic

seems to be a little more of a problem.

Mr. MCCALLUM. DHS is represented on eight of the nine subgroups in TSWG. The only subgroup that it’s not represented on is

Tactical Operations Support, and that’s a subgroup which is focused on direct support for tactical military operations overseas.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Bolka, let me ask you a question. The Department of Homeland Security, has it done a threat assessment that you’re aware

of, broad threat assessment?

Dr. BOLKA. There is no department-wide threat assessment that

I know of, Mr. Tierney. If I’m incorrect, I’ll correct that for the

record.

Mr. TIERNEY. I suspect you’re not. I don’t know of one either, and

I wanted to make that point.

So you have no threat assessment, in essence, in regard to homeland security issues; we have no list of priorities as to what our

most immediate needs are.

Dr. BOLKA. In the large sense, I think you’re probably correct.

Mr. TIERNEY. So I would think that one of the ways that logical

people might have addressed the situation was to do a threat assessment to determine what our priorities are, and then, through

a network of all the people involved in this, going right down to the

local responders, we would determine what technology we may

need to meet some of those needs we don’t already have. Then you

might ask for proposals of people to meet those needs and then

start going through your cooperation and analysis with these others.

Does that not sound legitimate to you?

Dr. BOLKA. That sounds legitimate, and it has been done on a

component basis by many of the components of Homeland Security.

Mr. TIERNEY. What are you referring to as a ‘‘component,’’

please?

Dr. BOLKA. Border Patrol for Border and Transportation Security, for example, or critical infrastructure protection and so on.

Mr. TIERNEY. So the border security people will determine what

they think they need and have made those needs known to you?

53

Dr. BOLKA. Currently, because we’re so new, a lot of the internal

relationships have not yet been formed. In the past, they have

worked with the TSWG, and we are establishing those relationships right now.

Mr. TIERNEY. I guess I’m a little mystified—you know, it’s 2

years in, September 11, and we’ve been asking on this committee,

Republicans and Democrats alike, for a threat assessment since immediately after that disaster. It made sense to everybody on this

committees that would be the first step that you would do, to determine what your threats are and set a priority. And then I think

it only stands to logic that once that’s done, then you would try to

put your resources for meeting those needs in order.

If, instead, what you’re telling me is that Border Security decides

that they’ve got certain needs and some other component decides

to throw it into the hopper to see what comes out, we’re probably

not handling this in a way that is going to best and timely serve

our needs.

Is there any effort to put some more order and more structure

in the way we go about this with regard to homeland security

issues?

Dr. BOLKA. Yes, there is. In the 2004 Appropriations Act, the appropriations bill, the Congress has stipulated that the research and

development submission for 2005 will be a single submission from

the Department of Homeland Security. That will be the impetus to

bring together the parties that are already working together somewhat to formalize the relationships and provide that information

and that request to the Congress.

Mr. TIERNEY. And I assume what we’ll do then is put out the bid

or request for proposals, those items that are prior advertised as

our immediate requests, and then move on down the line as our resources permit?

Dr. BOLKA. Yes, sir, that’s what we’re doing right now, based on

a program that has been defined.

Mr. TIERNEY. With a component?

Dr. BOLKA. With a component. We’re addressing those first.

Mr. TIERNEY. And I guess the dilemma of that is, we may find

out by 2005, way down the food chain we should have been addressing a number of things with higher priority; and I guess that’s

what irritates me a little bit, because we’ve been talking about it

for so long.

Let me ask you, communications—interoperability, communications systems. Two years after September 11, we’ve had Mr. Cooper

here, Steven, testifying that nobody was quite sure who had responsibility for that kind of interoperability and communication;

that the actual function was at Mr. Ridge’s original position at the

White House. But when Mr. Ridge was designated as the Secretary

of the Department of Homeland Security, he moved, but that responsibility didn’t; and there’s been some confusion, until late, as

to who owns that project.

Has your office, been dealing with any of the proposals that have

been coming forward to determine what system would be used by

all of our local first responders and their interaction with the Coast

Guard and FEMA and other groups?

Dr. BOLKA. No. No, sir.

54

Mr. TIERNEY. And why isn’t that in your department? Where is

it, if anywhere at all?

Dr. BOLKA. I don’t know the answer to your question, Mr.

Tierney. I’ll find out and give you an answer.

Mr. TIERNEY. Does it sound like—isn’t that a component of homeland security?

Dr. BOLKA. I personally don’t know, sir, but I——

Mr. TIERNEY. Who would know?

Dr. BOLKA. Well, I’ll try to find out and point you in the right

direction.

Mr. SHAYS. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. TIERNEY. Oh, sure.

Mr. SHAYS. Plenty of time here?

My understanding is, Dr. Bolka, you joined the Department of

Homeland Security 2 months ago or how long ago?

Dr. BOLKA. Reported September 2, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. September 2?

Dr. BOLKA. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. So we’re going to cut you a little bit of slack in that

regard.

Let me ask you this: Is that an indication that the office basically

has not been up and running, and it’s just starting to get up and

running now?

Dr. BOLKA. I think with the summer BAA that was issued

through the TSWG was the beginning of the Advanced Research

Projects Agency office coming up and running. And as I mentioned,

we put our second solicitation out today, and we do have enough

professionals on board right now to handle probably 8 or 10 development programs.

Mr. SHAYS. Is there anyone else with you that is potentially able

to answer some questions that you might not know an answer to,

that might have been there a little bit longer?

Dr. BOLKA. No, sir. I didn’t bring anyone else with me. If you can

tell me what the questions are, have your staff give me the questions.

Mr. TIERNEY. I just wanted to ask you what are the projects that

you have out so far? What was the first one?

Dr. BOLKA. The first one was through the TSWG, which was

rapid prototyping of chemical and biological sensors that could be

fielded very quickly.

Mr. TIERNEY. None of the other groups had ever asked for this

before; this was something unique to homeland security?

Dr. BOLKA. It is not unique; however, it is a need that is there

for the various components and first responders, and we are trying

to fill some of the existing holes.

The second solicitation was for the next generation of sensors,

which would be cheaper, more dense, faster and give better situational awareness.

Mr. TIERNEY. So essentially 2 years in, we have one issue, one

priority that is being addressed?

Dr. BOLKA. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Twice?

Dr. BOLKA. Well, actually it is not being addressed twice, it is

being addressed once for the near term, once for the longer term.

55

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. I am—certainly this is nothing personal with

you. My frustration here is not personal at all, but with the reorganization, and when it was implemented, and how it was structured

and what has been going on since. I sense some confusion and

some lack of leadership here. But the first responders in my district are at a loss on a number of different needs that they have,

and, frankly, contractors in my district are at a loss as to where

do they go if they have a great idea? Do they first try and get to

see whether or not local first responders or FEMA or the Coast

Guard or somebody else identifies and also recognizes that need,

then move up the chain? Do they come directly to you? But the first

responders, and when things go from yellow to orange, there is all

sorts of things that come into their mind as to what they need, and

they don’t have any idea where these are prioritized on the Federal

Government’s chain.

So I look forward to working with you. Again, I am not going to

ask you a lot of questions on that, you are so new, and apparently

you are going to give me some information, and that will be helpful, but people need to know these answers. And whatever way we

can be helpful to you in structuring this thing, because I think it

is important to move that assessment forward, as we say here for

the 2,000th time, that assessment and a prioritization and put

some meaning to all of this.

So thank you for your testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

I have a few more questions. One of the things that I am struggling a little bit with, and it is history that you are not really not

aware of, but when we set up the Department of Homeland Security, we visualized, or at least I did and a number of others, that

there were four pillars to this organization. And another pillar,

other than science and technology, was information, analysis and

infrastructure protection. That was the plug that would evaluate

all intelligence information.

And we had a hearing, not in this committee, but on the Select

Committee on Homeland Security that I was on, discussing TTIC,

which is the Terrorist Threat Integration Center—that is not within the Department of Homeland Security—and we are wrestling

with understanding what its role is as it relates to the Department

of Homeland Security.

And, Mr. McCallum, I am still doing a little bit of wrestling with

understanding how TSWG is not—is a valuable tool in which all

of this information comes, but really trying to understand how the

Department of Homeland Security is going to make sure it is not

just one of so many players in this process.

Now, one of the things I understand is that in this 2004 budget,

about 35 percent of your budget will come from the Department of

Homeland Security. Is that somewhat what you are hearing?

And, Mr. Jakub, if you care to jump in as well.

Mr. MCCALLUM. As I understand it, we don’t know yet from the

Department of Homeland Security what amount they anticipate

sending to us. We would anticipate our budget at this point, based

upon what we have heard from them, to be more in the neighborhood of 20 percent, but that varies. We are still in the formulation

56

stage, since we have just seen the conference reports, but in this

year’s budget they were about 20 to 25 percent.

Mr. SHAYS. Now, as the Department of Homeland Security joins

TSWG as a department, I realize that it used to have other elements within it that came from other departments that were part

of TSWG, but now that we are under this new structure, as it joins

as a department within TSWG, it is not clear to me whether TSWG

process is best suited for what may become expansive homeland security technology solutions.

Since the Department of Homeland Security is only one of many

votes on projects to be funded through TSWG, how does DHS ensure that its homeland security funds are not being used to fund

other agency priorities?

And, Dr. Bolka, I would like all of you to respond to that.

Mr. MCCALLUM. Since I have my mic on, maybe I will respond

first. First, I would like to make a correction. Based on our budget

from last year, they are about 15 percent of our total from a dollar

contribution in the 2003.

Mr. SHAYS. No.

Mr. MCCALLUM. In 2004, we don’t know what it is going to be.

Mr. SHAYS. Our information says it may be up to a third, but it

is obviously going to be more than 15.

Mr. MCCALLUM. One of the ways that we have attempted to ensure that the priority on protecting the homeland is recognized is

by adding DHS to the executive committee. And in the organizational structure which you saw as displayed on my page 2, they are

shown as a technical chair, which means that all of the work that

we put forward from this—from the nine subgroups, eight of nine

have senior DHS representation. Three of nine are chaired or cochaired by members of DHS agencies, such as TSA and the Secret

Service.

So they will get full membership at a voting level, they will get—

they have a first pass cut at the first level of management, at the

subgroup chairs. And then when we report our proposed program

plans for the year, they also sit on our executive committee, so that

if they feel that any areas are not being adequately addressed, or

areas that they think are primary priorities and need to be addressed more strongly aren’t being, they bring that up with our executive committee.

So there are multiple levels and checks and balances within our

system to ensure that, you know, a primary partner in our enterprise is adequately addressed. And, as Mr. Jakub said a few minutes ago, this is largely a matrix government organization that

really works. Most issues are settled on the good of the system.

And I have not seen, in the 4 years I have been with this organization, a homeland security-type issue that also wasn’t a military

issue and also wasn’t a State Department issue.

When there is a major technical priority that we can’t cover, it

is usually a gap in everyone’s protection scheme. So I have not seen

the issue of homeland security versus State versus DOD ever be an

issue that got beyond the executive committee.

Mr. TIERNEY. I don’t want to just be one note on this, but let me

ask Mr. Jakub and Mr. McCallum, do either of you then have an

assessment with respect to the Department of Defense or the DeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:57 May 04, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\92393.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
57

partment of State of what your particular needs are, and have you

prioritized those?

Mr. JAKUB. Let me answer it this way: Both my office and Ed’s

office receive a variety of Intelligence Community assessments that

deal with the terrorists threat, whether they be put out by TTIC

or whether they be put out by CIA, by DIA, whatever they happen

to be. There are a number of those that come out all of the time.

We use those as guidance materials when we are looking at the beginning of the year, when we are starting to prioritize what it is

that we want to do. If these assessments are saying that we need

to be really more attentive to—or the information is indicating, for

example, as I brought up in my testimony at the outset here, that

terrorists groups, some of them now are leaning more toward chem/

bio, radiological materials, and whatnot, that is a signal to us.

And that is something we have to do from a management perspective is pick up on the intelligence signals, and then make sure

that they are communicated to our subgroups. We do that at the

beginning of the year. So we will take a look at it, and we will give

our subgroups direction: We need you to emphasize this year CBR

countermeasures for example.

I also indicated for you that the other things that we are concerned about, and this is based on intel reporting, for example the

nature of the terrorist threat that emanates from new explosive

formulations, bombs, that type of a thing. Our direction to our subgroups, specifically our physical security subgroup that handles

blast mitigation countermeasures and other things related to bomb

squads and others, is to take a look at that threat in terms of developing requirements.

So they were told right up front that we were going to weight

potential monetary contributions in the areas of CBR and countermeasures, physical security, explosive detection and improvised devices. That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to give money to the other

subgroups, but we told them right from the get-go as we started

developing the program, these are the areas we need to concentrate

in. Then we take a look at what comes up through the requirements process.

Mr. TIERNEY. Can we envision a circumstance where, say, the

Department of Homeland Security would prioritize some need of

theirs above the things that you have given attention to, or that

your group has decided are going to get some priority?

Mr. JAKUB. That would be something that we would like to take

a look at in the executive committee, if DHS were to come in, and

I think this will work itself out over time. They are so new. They

are just now getting involved in the processes.

If they were to come to the executive committee at—again, at the

beginning of the fiscal year when we start this process and say—

and we would also look at the Intelligence Community on this, we

would like to see what the Intel Community has to say about a

given threat—but if they were to identify a specific area that needed to be addressed on a priority basis, we could factor that in very

easily.

Mr. TIERNEY. But it is a situation where your group would have

to meet and make a decision jointly, collectively I should say, and

it could end up being in contradiction to what the Secretary of the

58

Department believes ought to be given attention, and then we have

a situation on our hands. And my understanding of putting this

whole Department of Homeland Security together was that the Secretary was going to have ample authority to sort of take some control of a situation that really needed it.

Now, I know we didn’t do that with the Office of Management

and Budget, and I think that is a terrible mistake, that if the Secretary decides resources have to be applied somewhere, and OMB

overrules them, we are out of luck. And we saw that with Department of Energy, where the Secretary made a request of some magnitude, and the Department just tossed it out the window, and we

ended up with a very small amount.

So I hope there is going to be some way, Dr. Bolka and the other

two gentlemen, of addressing that, other than leaving it as a committee decision where we are dealing with homeland security, and

the Secretary is able to set some real direction there and make

probably the ultimate answer as where we have to go with respect

to homeland security, even if that means working outside your

group.

Dr. BOLKA. That is correct, Mr. Tierney. And, in fact, the establishing legislation that established HSARPA provides me with the

transaction—other transaction authority and contracting and legal

authority to contract for ourselves if we have a requirement that

can’t be met or can’t be folded into a joint development, or we need

to modify what the product of a joint development is somewhat. We

have the capability of doing that ourselves.

Mr. TIERNEY. Does that mean that if you don’t think they are

moving fast enough, or putting it in a high enough priority, you can

go outside and do it?

Dr. BOLKA. That is correct.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. TTIC was established in 1986, as you point out, to

deal with counterterrorist—I am sorry. TSWG was established in

1986 to deal with counterterrorism measures, innovations; is that

correct, Mr. Jakub?

Mr. JAKUB. Yes, sir. Read counterterrorism in the largest context. We look at it as counterterrorism, antiterrorism, support for

the intelligence and security elements and also working consequence management. So it is a very broad term.

Mr. SHAYS. Was that the same time that Mr. Bremer was—or

not necessarily Ambassador Bremer, but when we established an

ambassador on terrorism?

Mr. JAKUB. Yes, sir. It was right about the same time.

Mr. SHAYS. What I am still wrestling with is, Mr. McCallum,

there are so many ways that we define technology in the Department of Defense, and this is just one of the doors that you can go

in.

I am just trying to appreciate why DOD won’t drown out DHS

in its need for the protection of our homeland with innovations.

That is kind of what I am wrestling with right now. What is the

protection that will make that not happen?

I will just tell you, I am getting to develop a bias. For instance,

I think rebuilding of Iraq, and I support it strongly, going into Iraq,

is being run by DOD when I think it should be run by State. But

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it is basically, it is—Ambassador Bremer is answerable to the Secretary. You are answerable to the Secretary.

Make me feel more comfortable that somehow this new agency,

with someone who has only been there 2 months or has been there

1 month, is—his people are going to have their voice heard.

Mr. MCCALLUM. Mr. Chairman, the history of the TSWG shows

that the Secret Service, the TSA, and a number of other—Coast

Guard have for years been primary participants in the TSWG process and have numerous prototypes that we delivered, and not just

that we delivered, those elements of what is now DHS help us develop those.

If you remember in my opening statement, the users that identified requirements to us help us work through the process and deliver them, DOD and State have both chartered our organization

to be an interagency forum. No single organization contributes all

of their R&D dollars to us for fast prototyping, and neither DOD

nor DHS nor State Department—the piece that they come to us

with is for those parts which are interagency in nature and which

will have broad application. There are always, within each organization, core responsibilities that they want to do in house.

Within DHS even the most generous proposals to send money to

this interagency body are but a small portion of their R&D budget.

We would not anticipate attempting to do all of that. But in the

fast prototyping world, no one is faster or more agile than we are.

Mr. SHAYS. Just before we go to the next panel, would you take

one of the examples that you have in your extensive testimony,

other than one that you made reference to, tell me how it began,

and how we capture our investment. In other words, we are using

Federal dollars to help respond to requests for funds? But some of

these are going to become very viable, and, frankly, the manufacturers should do quite well in producing these for the government.

How do we capture back something?

Mr. MCCALLUM. I am not sure what you mean by capture back,

Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Our own investment, the money we pay.

Mr. MCCALLUM. Well, if you would like me to pick one of these,

let me pick one that I don’t believe any of the——

Mr. SHAYS. And make reference to the page, please.

Mr. MCCALLUM. Page 12. And I also pick it because I don’t believe that anybody here is going to demonstrate this, but it is the

next-generation low-cost robot. A few years ago a—both the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Justice were looking

for a lower-cost robot for EOD teams across the community, and we

started out in a requirements-setting session to begin to build a

new low-cost robot, something that, as the law enforcement agencies in this country tell us, needs to cost less than a squad car.

Most robots are made to be very high-capability items of equipment

and are fairly substantial in cost.

But as we began looking at this within the IJ and the entire

community, we discovered, though, what was available commercially in Canada, called the Vanguard Robot, for $35,000 apiece,

which completed about 80 percent of the requirements. And we

went back to the committee and said these guys are ready to begin

action right now.

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So the process wasn’t one of long-term R&D, but the process of

bringing back to the government was that we had a community of

technicians and technical folks that knew what we needed to get.

We had a community of users that identified what requirements

they had to live by, what they needed, and were able to make some

cost decisions to go and get something that was good enough while

we completed the development.

Mr. SHAYS. That is buying off the shelf, in a sense, right?

Mr. MCCALLUM. For the most part. We are developing the rest

of it.

Mr. SHAYS. So the only cost was your having to discover this and

to make some decisions to purchase it.

Mr. MCCALLUM. Some slight upgrades.

Mr. SHAYS. Some slight upgrades. But take something where—

and a firm came in, investors came in, and they said, we have this

idea. We think it will benefit you tremendously. We need a sum of

money to continue our research and prove to you that it works.

Then you put in millions of dollars, or hundreds of thousands or

whatever. They then sell it to you. How do you determine price?

How do you know that—there—because you are the only purchaser. How do you work out all of those things?

Mr. MCCALLUM. We are most frequently, sir, not the only purchaser. Most of the products that we put out we attempt to put out

on the commercial market. For most of the people that you will

hear talk in the second panel, we identify a requirement. And in

the second phase of those requirements, in the white paper, we

begin to identify a commercialization or technology transfer process, which is one of the focuses for selection.

If we can’t identify how it is going to be transferred, who is going

to build it, who is going to manufacture it, who is going to maintain it, and what its cost is going to be, that is an indication for

us not to move forward. Most of our items are items that are either

going to commercial status——

Mr. SHAYS. That is even better in a sense. I am just trying to

understand how, when you put 300,000—and I am not suggesting

anything bad, I just want to understand it. I vote for our government trying to fund those innovations that will make sense. I just

want to understand how the financial transactions work.

It costs us $300,000 for the low-cost robot. Give me something

that costs more and then walk me through it. Do we get our money

back ever, or is it just money that is spent? I mean, if we help

someone develop an item that can be sold at significant profit and

so on, does the company have any obligation to pay for those initial

investments?

Mr. MCCALLUM. We typically do not try to recover royalties for

the government. Our primary objective is to get the equipment out

in the hands of the users in the fastest and most cost-effective way

that we can. Typically the government retains rights to equipment,

but we do not go for royalties. Typically government purchases

rights so that if a company is bought out and ceases to produce an

item, or there is some other cost piece for that, that the government retains the right to go forward and manufacture it elsewhere.

But our primary objective is to produce the equipment, not to move

for the royalties.

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Mr. TIERNEY. On that same thought, then, do we do anything at

all about keeping that technology open for others in the industry

to use? In other words, we have funded in some cases a substantial

amount of money for technology to be developed. We are not going

to recoup our investment. Then do we at least allow this technology, maybe with some parameters, though, to protect the investment of the individual, but allow others in the industry to then

build on that or use it so there is some competition or that others

might take advantage of it, and at least do that with respect to the

public since these are public funds that got these things started?

Mr. MCCALLUM. That is, of course, dependent. You get into an

area where I would have to start getting my IPR attorneys involved. But in some cases we advertise for licensing so that companies can bid with the initial developer on manufacturing, but that

is on a case-by-case basis. We encourage companies to team to get

those kinds of things done.

And we don’t typically find that these kinds of things are closed.

But many of the companies, you can probably address that better

with the next panel, have IPR rights and have proprietary data involved with these developments.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Just before we go to the next panel, I am still wrestling with the simple concept here. Do you, Dr. Bolka, feel that you

have a mandate to do some of what TSWG does internally? In

other words, do you believe that you need to set up an operation

where people can go directly to you for funding, or is all of the

funding that is going to be out of the Department of Homeland Security going to go through this funnel of TSWG?

Dr. BOLKA. As I said in my testimony, Mr. Chairman, this fiscal

year, this coming fiscal year, the Congress has stipulated that $75

million we spend on rapid prototyping. My total budget this year

in HSARPA will probably be around $350 million.

Your question was do I have a mandate to do rapid prototyping

other than through TSWG? I believe I have the capability to do it.

Depending on the interagency and interdepartmental nature of the

requirements, it may be that working through TSWG is the best

way to do it.

If it is something that is unique to one of the DHS components,

then I can do it myself, because I have contracting officers and

legal personnel, and we can let contracts. So for the rest of my

budget, I am establishing a contracting capability, the appropriate

legal support is made available, and, as I said, the other administrative support is available to me as well.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Jakub, just walk me through this as I try to sort

this out. Should DHS have the capability to basically duplicate

what TSWG does and do it internally and not have to go through

TSWG?

Mr. JAKUB. Let me answer it this way. There are a lot of departments and agencies that are in the TSWG. Many of them have

their own budgets for research and development. The FBI, the

Agency, the Department of Agriculture, whatever.

What we offer in TSWG are another avenue. There may be a requirement they have that they don’t really know how to work. They

can come to TSWG with that. They may have a requirement that

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is going to be useful for more than just one agency, and they can’t

afford to develop it themselves. They can bring it to TSWG. If that

fits with the requirements we have, we may be able to partner with

them and leverage moneys. We don’t duplicate what individual

agencies do, so we aren’t taking anybody else’s money to do this.

What we have is a program.

Mr. SHAYS. Say that again. That doesn’t make sense to me. I

don’t know what you mean, you don’t duplicate. Go on.

Mr. JAKUB. Agencies that have their own R&D budgets can fund

R&D within their own agencies.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. So you are not going to do the same project

in both places? Is that what you mean?

Mr. JAKUB. That is one of the things we would make sure didn’t

happen.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. It is almost like if you don’t get it through

TSWG, you can go directly to the Department. And maybe that is

good or bad, I don’t know, but it is—I am just really trying to understand how this new agency, the Department of Homeland Security, kind of fits in. And I realize, Mr. McCallum, that this—it used

to be an old agency in the fact that you had members and do have

members who were there well before we had a Department of

Homeland Security, we just collected under the Department of

Homeland Security.

But I can make an argument that you should put TSWG under

the Department of Homeland Security. I could just make an argument that could or should happen. Just tell me what would be the

pros and cons of it.

Mr. MCCALLUM. The primary con, sir, is that the military

warfighting effort in the offensive side of that, the intelligence support that we do, and the support for the Department of State would

be lost.

The defensive component is a subset. The kinds of things that

DHS is doing to protect the Nation are of primary importance, but

it is a subset of the total combating terrorism technology development effort. We can do both, because the technologies that are developed are appropriate for both.

Mr. SHAYS. Theoretically if a company came to be funded, and

TSWG said no, could they theoretically go to—and, Mr. Jakub, I

would like you to respond as well—could they theoretically go to

the Department of Homeland Security or the Agriculture Department, depending on what area it was, and submit that application

hoping the Department will do it directly?

Mr. JAKUB. It is possible.

Dr. BOLKA. Yes, sir. In fact, in DHS we have established an email address that we use to solicit—well, that we use to collect unsolicited proposals. It is science.technology@dhs.gov.

Each one of those unsolicited proposals is examined, it is compared against requirements, it is circulated through the Department to see if there is any interest, and a response is sent back

to the individual. We treat those proposals very, very seriously.

Some of them are frivolous. Many of them are not.

So we do have the opportunity, within the components of the Department and within science and technology, to collect and process

63

unsolicited proposals and also to solicit proposals for requirements

that are either unique to a component or unique to DHS.

Mr. SHAYS. When we debated, and when I was sold on having

the Department of Homeland Security, one of the arguments, and

one of the pillars, was your pillar, your directorate, that basically

we said this is one place to assess technology for counterterrorism

to protect our homeland, and what I am getting a feeling is that

TSWG is one place, and probably the primary place, but then we

can still go to all of the different departments and agencies to get

funding as well. That is kind of what I am left feeling. Is that the

way I should feel? Dr. Bolka.

Dr. BOLKA. Not as far as DHS goes, sir, because the intent of the

Congress and the intent of the Department is to grow the Department of Science and—or the Directorate of Science and Technology

to perform exactly that function.

Mr. SHAYS. That is what I thought. That is how I started this

hearing.

How do you react to that, Mr. McCallum?

Mr. MCCALLUM. I would react by looking within the working

groups as I have seen them operate. Industry or academia, both

United States and foreign, do bid on requirements that go out.

They bid not only to different agencies, but within agencies for people who are looking for the kinds of products that they are selling.

But as I have sat through some of these subgroup meetings and observed, frequently a proposal will come in that the Coast Guard or

the Navy or the New York Police Department will say, we looked

at that. Here is what we thought about it: We didn’t fund it.

We also have people step up and say, hey, we are already funding that proposal. We have already committed funds to it. Don’t

move down that lane.

We not only choose things to fund, we choose things not to fund.

An example from a few years ago was one where the Department

of Energy that had been doing research in both physical security

largely at Sandia National Laboratory and explosive detection at

some of the other weapons labs brokered through TSWG, made a

deal with the FAA, that the FAA, because of their funding, was

going to fund primarily the explosives detection, and DOE was

going to fund physical security so that we wouldn’t have a duplication, and we would have a more cohesive Federal effort at both

physical security and explosives detection.

Mr. SHAYS. Before Mr. Tierney asks questions, if I had an innovative idea from the private sector, would I go to TSWG first if it

impacts the Department of Homeland Security, or would I go to the

Department of Homeland Security? Would I go first to the Department of Homeland Security, get it; if I don’t get it, go to you to

have you reconsider; or would I do it in reverse?

Mr. MCCALLUM. We respond to specific requirements. When our

sessions sit down and look, we define specific requirements that we

are looking for. The DHS broad agency announcement that we just

published for them had 51 defined requirements, and they would

respond to those requirements. It is just not a—a come one, come

all. We advertise for specific user-defined requirements for technology.

64

Mr. SHAYS. But what about the person that has thought of the

idea that you haven’t thought of asking, but it is brilliant? I mean,

let me make the point. I had a homemaker who was a scientist,

but now at home, and she came up with an extraordinary idea in

terms of collecting data while she was doing stuff at home, and nobody asked her for this idea. The creativity of the American citizen

was at work. Where would she go? Would she go to you first, or

would she go to the Department of Homeland Security? That is

really the question I am asking.

Mr. MCCALLUM. I suspect she can go wherever she wants. We do

take unsolicited proposals. We pull boards together and examine

them. Frequently in the last year or year and a half, we have taken

those kinds of proposals from the Office of Homeland Security,

when Governor Ridge was operating out of the White House, and

more recently from the Department of Homeland Security, and

staffed those around the Federal Government when they didn’t

meet one of our technology requirements where we knew that other

agencies were looking for those kinds of issues, or if they weren’t,

that they might be interested in them because they looked attractive to us. So we staff those out and send those to people who we

call sponsors and who might have the money or the interest to fund

those kinds of things.

Dr. BOLKA. Our unsolicited proposals go through much the same

process. We look at the idea. We look at our needs in DHS. We

have representatives on the working groups in TSWG, and we also

have the executive committee membership in TSWG.

So an unsolicited proposal that comes to us can go through exactly the same process that it would have gone had it gone to Mr.

McCallum’s organization.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Dr. Bolka, let me ask you this: You have two ongoing projects

that you have in TSWG right now, and I assume that all of your

components may well be using parts of your research and development budget, or your research and development budget may be

being used to support some concepts some of your components want

researched.

Do you have an inventory of what is being done outside of TSWG

right now within any of the agencies or components under your

body?

Dr. BOLKA. In the area of chemical/biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives, we do have a pretty good list of what is going

on in the user agencies, yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Might you make that available to the committee for

our review?

Dr. BOLKA. Yes, sir.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Are there areas where there may be things going

on where you don’t believe that you have a handle on it yet?

Dr. BOLKA. I am sure that there are things going on that I don’t

know about yet.

Mr. TIERNEY. In terms of research and development?

Dr. BOLKA. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Really. That is interesting. As you find out those

things that might be interesting for us to know, too, and when you

think that you have a grip on it and got a little bit of control in

determining what that is, we would like to know when that point

arrives, or at least you might give us an estimate now of when you

think that point will be, and then let us know when it arrives.

My concern is that we didn’t give the Secretary the kind of authority that I think would really make this kind of thing work. I

mentioned that earlier in terms of the budget. And I want to make

sure that homeland security, some central individual or aspect here

is determining what our needs are, setting a priority, and then

making darn sure that they are being addressed.

And I don’t have a problem with them being addressed through

TSWG, if that is the best way to go, and everybody sharing sort

of a sweeping idea of knocking out the stuff that has already been

filed somewhere else so it is not duplicated or whatever. But I do

want to make sure that we are working in a sense that when we

think something is important for homeland security, it gets done

and doesn’t have to get in line and queue up with other concepts

on that.

So if you would do that, I would appreciate that.

Dr. BOLKA. Yes, sir. I don’t have a timetable for you right now,

but I will work with committee staff to establish one and to submit

the report.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Thank all of you gentlemen.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just invite each of you to make any comment

that you think we should have responded to, any question you

think we should have asked, or to make any comment before we

go to the next panel. But, before you do, let me just acknowledge,

I know, Dr. Bolka, you are new here, but you have a distinguished

career, so you bring tremendous expertise. I didn’t mean to imply

that being new didn’t mean that you don’t bring something significant to the table. I want to be fair to you in the sense this is a

new effort, and you are trying to get things under control.

And, Mr. Jakub and Mr. McCallum, I know that you have—you

work significant hours in this effort, and you have had tremendous

successes.

We are just trying to sort out what we have done in the last few

years and understand how it works. So we thank all three of you

for your service to our country, very sincerely. And do you have any

final comments that you wish to make?

Mr. JAKUB. Yes. If I could add one. We didn’t talk about really

the foreign aspect, the international aspect of the TSWG program.

We have been able, through those contacts with our current three

partners, to develop a lot of technology which is not only useful to

us for our counterterrorism efforts, whether they be domestic or

whether they be what we are using overseas, and those countries

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as well. It permits us to leverage a lot of these resources we talked

about and also to access their technology bases.

So when you ask about the value of the program, in looking at

it we tend to look at it as not homeland security on the one hand

and rest of the world on the other. Technology is technology. We

can use it here, we can use it abroad, we can use it with our

friends. And the value we get out of leveraging all of these resources has been invaluable for the U.S. Government as well as for

our foreign partners in this war on terrorism.

Mr. SHAYS. This committee, in response to that, had an extraordinary opportunity to see some of the technology that the Israelis

had in terms of—without going into much detail—of how they

would—those who had been captured, how they would find a way

to save captured folks in Israel, and how they would confront the

terrorists who held them. And the technology that they had was so

simple, and yet so brilliant. I am delighted that you responded to

this area because it is very important that there be that dialog.

And it raises the point, Dr. Bolka, that the Department of Homeland Security, while it is domestic, we will learn tremendously from

our international——

Mr. JAKUB. Yes. And, in point of fact, sir, we are opening those

doors for the Department of Homeland Security with our existing

three partners using our existing program, and we are looking at

possibly expanding with a couple of other foreign partners. We will

also make that same offer to DHS. It is an example of how, I think,

our program has helped DHS get up and running and will help

them in the future.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, my staff is happy about this stuff, because they

wanted me to ask you about the international side. So thank you.

Do you have any other comment, Mr. McCallum?

Mr. MCCALLUM. I would probably just like to close by pointing

out that what we like, both State and Defense like to see this as

a collaborative process. It is not one in which we are insisting that

agencies come to the table or that they send money. It is a forum

by which the larger agencies, I think, have found that they can collaborate and ensure that they know what is happening in other

agencies, and indeed sometimes within their own agencies because

of the breadth and scope of this program.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Dr. Bolka.

Dr. BOLKA. Well, as you said, Mr. Chairman, I am relatively new

in the organization, but I would like to thank the committee and

the Congress for the support and the confidence that was expressed

in our fiscal year 2004 S&T budget. We will do our best to execute

it wisely.

Mr. SHAYS. I am sure you will. Thank you gentlemen.

Our final, and our second panel, is Dr. Gordhan Patel, president,

JP Laboratories, Middlesex, NJ; Mr. Jack Sawicki, director of business development, GEOMET Technologies, Germantown, MD; Mr.

Lee F. Sword, program manager, Military Systems Division, IRobot

Corp., Burlington, MA. Our fourth panelist is Mr. Richard

Mastronardi, vice president of product management, American

Science and Engineering, Inc., Billerica, MA. And our next panelist

is Mr. Bruce deGrazia, chairman, Homeland Security Industries

69

Association, Washington, DC. We have Mr. Kenneth P. Ducey,

president, Markland Technologies, Inc., Ridgefield, CT, and for the

record, he is first among equals among this panel; and finally, Mr.

Laurence D. Bory, vice president, Federal Government Relations,

HDR, Inc.

And so what we will do is we will ask you all to stand. If you

would stand, and I will swear you in. Thank you.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record that our witnesses have responded in the affirmative.

Thank you for your patience as we had the first panel. But Dr.

Patel is the first, and Mr. Sawicki, and Mr. Sword is third, Mr.

Mastronardi is fourth in this. OK.

Now, let me just say to you, you have prepared comments. Given

that we have seven of you, it would be helpful if you would stay

closer to the 5 minutes. But don’t read fast. I would prefer you to

leave something out; if you choose to, you may. Frankly, you don’t

need to read. You would probably do a better job just describing

some points you want us to know. It would be helpful if you responded to some of the issues that came up from the first panel,

and so it may be that you would like to submit your testimony for

the record and just speak extemporaneously.

So we are going to start as you are lined up. That is how we are

going to do it. So, Dr. Patel, thank you very much for being here.

STATEMENTS OF GORDHAN PATEL, PRESIDENT, JP LABORATORIES, MIDDLESEX, NJ; JACK SAWICKI, DIRECTOR OF

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, GEOMET TECHNOLOGIES, LLC,

GERMANTOWN, MD; LEE F. SWORD, PROGRAM MANAGER,

MILITARY SYSTEMS DIVISION, IROBOT CORP., BURLINGTON,

MA; RICHARD MASTRONARDI, VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, AMERICAN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, INC., BILLERICA, MA; BRUCE DEGRAZIA, CHAIRMAN,

HOMELAND SECURITY INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, DC; KENNETH P. DUCEY, PRESIDENT, MARKLAND

TECHNOLOGIES, INC., RIDGEFIELD, CT; AND LAURENCE D.

BORY, VICE PRESIDENT, FEDERAL GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, HDR, INC., ORLANDO, FL

Dr. PATEL. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you

for inviting me to testify about counterterrorism technology, especially the product we have developed. JP Laboratories developed a

credit-card-sized low-cost radiation dosimeter, as I have in my

hand, and I have provided samples to you, both irradiated and

unirradiated samples. The dosimeter can be used to monitor levels

of radiation exposure in an event of radiological attack by terrorists.

It is widely believed that terrorists have a new weapon called a

dirty bomb. A dirty bomb is an ordinary explosive packed with a

radioactive material. When detonated, it will spread radioactive

dust.

High doses of radiation such as x-ray emitted by the radioactive

dust can cause cancer and even death. A dirty bomb could cause

widespread panic, massive disruption, and rendering the surrounding area uninhabitable for years.

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In the event of a detonation of a dirty bomb, it is imperative that

people affected by the dirty bomb and the first responders need to

quickly assess the radiation exposure. The people affected by a

dirty bomb will know their radiation exposure and will not panic,

and the concern will be minimized. If they have a wearable inexpensive radiation dosimeter, they will know their radiation exposure.

If they are not exposed to radiation or receive a very low dose,

they will not need to worry and would not need to rush to the hospital. However, those who have received a high dose may go to a

hospital, and physicians would know whom to treat first.

In order to determine radiation exposure, hospitals will need to

obtain blood samples from every potential victim. That will be practically impossible to do with so many people affected by a dirty

bomb. Panic among the people and the concern can be minimized

if they have a wearable, easy-to-read personal radiation dosimeter.

JP Labs has developed a credit-card-sized radiation dosimeter,

we call it SIRAD for Self-Indicating Instant Radiation Alert Dosimeter, which can be used to monitor high-energy radiation released

in an event of a dirty bomb attack. When exposed to radiation from

a dirty bomb or nuclear detonation, the sensing strip, which is in

the center of this bagge, when exposed to radiation from the dirty

bomb, or nuclear detonation—the sensing strip of SIRAD develops

blue color instantly, and the color intensifies with the dose, providing the wearer and medical personnel instantaneous information of

the victim’s exposure to radiation.

The dosage is estimated by matching the color of the sensing

strips with the color reference chart and the number printed on the

side of the sensing strip. It can take days to get such information

by other methods currently available.

SIRAD is inexpensive, will cost less than about $10. JP Labs has

developed several products with Federal funding. The development

of SIRAD was funded by the Department of Defense from 1997 to

1999, and by Technical Support Working Group [TSWG]. TSWG

recognized SIRAD’s significance to the first responder and has proceeded to make them aware of the dosimeter’s availability.

TSWG has selected our second proposal for funding to go to what

we call a smarter dosimeter, in which we are eliminating the color

reference chart, and the number will be read automatically, and if

there is any false positive, it will be indicated.

A week ago I had an opportunity to meet with many first responders at the Technology for Public Safety in Critical Incident

Response Conference organized by the National Institution of Justice in St. Louis, MO. TSWG has helped many organizations put

a number of products and processes into the hands of the first responders to fight terrorism. We believe that TSWG can do an even

better job if it becomes an independent agency or with a larger

budget.

I will be happy to answer your questions.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, Doctor.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Patel follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. During the course of your testimony, you may want

to tell us whether this was something that the government ideally

is using, or whether it is going to go on the open market. I am not

going to you ask to respond now, Dr. Patel, but if you can incorporate in your statements, it would be helpful if you can.

Mr. SAWICKI. Good afternoon. My name is Jack Sawicki. It is an

honor to be invited to testify before you today on our experience

with the Technical Support Working Group, or TSWG.

I am director of business development for GEOMET Technologies, a division of Versar Corp., a small business

headquartered in Springfield, VA. We have been in the business of

response, testing, research and development with chemical and biological agents and other hazardous materials for over 30 years. I

also live in Arlington, VA, where I am a member of the Cherry Hill

Volunteer Fire Department and represented Arlington from 1999

until September 2001 on the Department of Defense/Department of

Justice interagency group for counterterrorism.

GEOMET was first awarded our first TSWG contract to develop

these personal protective ensembles for first responders and medical personnel. DTAPEs, Disposal Toxic Agent Protective Ensembles, and I have two here today, were designed to provide protection from chemical, biological, and radiological materials of terrorist or industrial origin, and these were actually submitted, to answer your question, sir, to a very general requirement that came

out, and were specifically targeted to these users.

One of the requirements that we had in the negotiations was the

proper integration of protective suits with boots, gloves and respirators, without the use of inherently unreliable field expedient

measures, such as duct tape. And one of the comments I would like

to make to Mr. Tierney, that that specific requirement was given

us in a meeting with Massachusetts General Hospital, when we

had the users in the emergency room at one of earlier demonstrations there. They said, we don’t have time to be fooling around with

tape and things like that when we actually have an emergency.

We developed four systems, two for firefighters and HAZMAT

teams that typically use self-contained breathing apparatus, one for

emergency medical service personnel that you would normally see

on ambulances or on other types of response equipment, and one

for hospital emergency personnel. The EMS and hospital resulted

in the ones we have today, the hospital personnel, and the green

one for the first responders. Those items are currently offered for

sale by our firm with several subcontractors, including the DuPont

Co. and Global Secure, Onguard and North Safety Co.

One barrier we have encountered in the marketplace that tries—

to show you some of the problems, I guess, we see with the process

is that many users are still accepting cheap or what I call duct tape

fixes in purchasing all kinds of equipment with Federal funds, even

though they do not meet applicable safety standards, such as those

from the National Fire Protection Association that have actually

been endorsed by the interagency board. I would suggest that Congress in the future might do some work in that area, to try to make

sure that equipment that first responders do get does meet these

minimum standards.

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Another contract that GEOMET has had with TSWG was the

Rapid Contaminated Carcass and Plant Disposal System—if I could

have that third picture—which was funded by the U.S. Department

of Agriculture. The charge in this program was to design a portable

system that could be distributed to each State, probably to the veterinary colleges, and could be rapidly trucked to outbreak sites

throughout the United States. The incinerators must safely burn

plant or animal materials that were contaminated with biological

agents such as anthrax, hoof and mouth, etc. Currently the stateof-the-art for disposal of such material is open burning or burial,

neither of which are completely effective.

One requirement with the system had to—that the system had

to automatically accept entire longhorn steers, which weigh up to

about 2,000 pounds, tree trunks, truckloads of chickens, etc., at a

minimum rate of 120,000 pounds per day, without putting out any

pollution. To do this, if you are into technology, our guys went

crazy with this. We had a grinder with an 80,000-pound blade,

which was required to take these longhorn steers. It is quite a neat

design. Unfortunately, the design phase was successfully completed; the project was canceled due to lack of funding.

Again, if you can see the picture up there, the material is

dumped into the front end, and basically everything automatically

comes out the back end as smoke and ash.

And the veterinarians at USDA that were over in the UK burning the carcases from the hoof and mouth disease over there were

the big proponents of that effort. They really felt that there was a

lot of contamination spread from just open burning.

I might add in Virginia where I live, a lot of chicken feathers

ended up in people’s swimming pools and houses miles away from

this last incident that we had where they burned something like

a million chickens. They had open burial pits in the Shenandoah

Valley.

In 2002, we were awarded another TSWG contract to develop a

heat stress calculator, which was given earlier, and we got into this

as our firm has personal experience to the history of performing environmental remediation. And we did the disinfection of GSA

Building 401, which processes the mail for the executive branch,

and we also handled part of the cleanup of the Soviet Union biological weapons dump site in Uzbekistan, where the temperatures

were around 100 degrees in both cases. Again, the heat stress calculator allowed workers to determine how long they can safely operate in personal protective equipment. And I might add, our subcontractor on that was the former Director of the U.S. Army Research Institution of Environmental Medicine up in Massachusetts.

Our experience with TSWG has been generally good. We have

one suggestion for improving the process. The one-page quad chart

format in some cases did not allow sufficient space to provide

enough information for evaluation, in our opinion. And we suggest

that firms be allowed to provide a two-page mini white paper at

the same time they put in the quad chart. If the reviewers were

to see a quad chart that interests them but have questions about

the proposal, the two-page white paper could be consulted for additional information. And we believe that there may be some proposVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:57 May 04, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00092 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\92393.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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als that have not been funded as reviewers were not able to fully

understand the concept based on the small, small picture.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sawicki follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Sword.

Mr. SWORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. You know, we do not allow people who testify before

us to play with toys, sir. Last week, I had someone who was eating

at the table, so this is getting a little strange here. Tell us about

it. I am sorry. We will start your clock over again here.

Mr. SWORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of this distinguished subcommittee for the honor to testify on my company’s

experience with and opinions of the technical support working

group process. I Robot Corp. is a young entrepreneurial company

in Burlington, MA. While we are a small business, we are the largest supplier of mobile robots, and recognized as a technological

leader in our field. My name is Lee Sword, and I am a program

manager in the military systems division of i Robot. I lead the five

TSWG funded projects that are investigating technologies for the

next generation of explosive ordinance disposal tools. My remarks

today will include i Robot’s experiences with the TSWG process, a

brief capitalistic view of my project’s target market, and conclude

with my opinion related to a potential improvement in the process.

I Robot is in the business to bring robotic technology into the

mainstream through defense and commercial channels. Our team

of 76 dedicated engineers have worked on robotics systems that

ventured miles into the Earth, journeyed to other planets, revealed

insights into civilizations that no longer exist, and have improved

the situational awareness of our troops in combat. We have submitted a total of 34 responses to four different broad agency announcements from TSWG. Solicitations to which we responded span the

spectrum from the narrow focus of requesting a next generation of

explosive ordinance disposal robotic tools to the more general request for technology to combat terrorism.

In each case, we believe that the solicitations were posted with

appropriate technical detail, clear instructions with regard to how

to properly respond, and provided reasonable timeframes for the responses to be generated. Noteworthy is the fact that none of the

solicitations initially requested full proposals but instead asked for

either white papers or single page quad charts. Five of i Robot’s 34

responses to TSWG generated requests for full proposals, and all

five have resulted in contracts to develop proof of concept prototypes.

TSWG and i Robot share some common visions for the future of

robotics. We share the opinion that in order to be useful, advanced

technologies must be developed with the end users’ needs in mind.

Without clear objectives and measurable success criteria, scientists

and engineers will tend to create really cool but useless technology.

The benefit of modular designs is another shared vision that has

already served our company well. The robot presented at this hearing was configured as an explosive ordinance disposal robot, yet

shares the same base chassis as those currently in use by our

forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our robots deployed overseas have a scout payload installed

where the EOD arm is on this robot.

The need for interoperability is a third area of shared vision.

TSWG is defining a common architecture for robots, payloads, and

control units that will allow compliant equipment for multiple venVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:57 May 04, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00099 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\92393.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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dors to seamlessly integrate into useful systems. We at i Robot endorse this approach, and are working with TSWG to refine and mature the concept so true plug and play capability can be delivered

to the end user.

The end users for the next generation tools being developed are

local, State, and federally supported bomb squads. Given the total

number of active bomb squads in existence, there is very little financial incentive for private industry to invest large sums of

money in break-through technologies. The past two decades have

seen only small evolutionary changes to existing equipment, but

the recent infusion of money from TSWG is causing revolutionary

changes in the capability and utility of EOD equipment that otherwise may have taken many years to incur on its own. I Robot’s experience with the TSWG process was and continues to be a positive

one. The entire process from release of the broad agency announcement to issuance of development contracts is handled in a professional manner by experienced individuals that obviously have a

good grasp of the end users’ needs with an understanding of the

limitations of the available equipment. My one recommendation for

improvement in the TSWG process would involve implementing

some mechanism for quickly increasing staffing levels to address

unanticipated workloads. I’m specifically addressing the overload

experience following the release of the homeland defense broad

agency announcement where a total of 12,500 responses were received.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This concludes my statements.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sword follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Tierney just pointed out that you live in his district. Is this correct?

Mr. SWORD. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Terrific. But you are still, Mr. Ducey, first among

equals here.

Mr. MASTRONARDI. Yes. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, on behalf of American Science and Engineering, AS&E, I

would like to thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today

about our relationship with TSWG, and where I think it has been

beneficial both to our company and to the Nation.

We have a relationship with TSWG that goes back to as far as

1998, from what I can determine.

Since the tragedy of September 11th, the role of TSWG has become more important than ever. I believe that the mandate that

they have to identify appropriate technologies and facilitate the

rapid prototyping of these technologies is extremely vital. Our company has been in business since 1958, and we have pioneered a lot

of work in detection and advancing the fields of x-ray astronomy,

medical imaging, non-destructive testing, and, more importantly

today, security screening. Anyone in this room has passed through

a security checkpoint in this building that uses AS&E equipment.

If you had an object x-rayed today, it was with our equipment. The

same would be true of pretty much every government building in

Washington, DC. Our equipment is used every day throughout the

world to inspect a broad range of items; these range from pocketbooks of people entering the White House to deliver goods at Andrews Air Force base to cargo containers that are entering the port

of Hong Kong.

For our company, it’s a constant challenge to keep up with the

terrorists who are perfecting methods to circumvent security measures every day. And I believe this is where TSWG comes into the

picture. TSWG can support this effort by speeding up the time to

market of many new technologies, and most recently TSWG has

agreed to help us develop and test a new product called the Z

Backscatter Van [ZBV]. I have enclosed a couple figures in the testimony that might be helpful.

This single-sided x-ray product uses our patented Z Backscatter

technology to identify hidden contraband. It’s built into a small,

maneuverable delivery-type van that allows the user to both covertly or overtly look into vehicles and cargo containers. It can easily identify explosives, weapons, and in some cases, can be used to

effectively look under people’s clothing to find suicide bombs.

We have an additional capability that we offer on this product

called Radioactive Threat Detection. This can identify the radioactive materials that are often associated with dirty bombs; they

are typically gamma emitters. There is also a capability to detect

neutron emitters that are often the materials that are used to

make nuclear weapons.

Recognizing the potential of this product, ZBV, TSWG has agreed

to help us develop additional capabilities. These capabilities include

the ability to operate in remote and quite challenging hostile environments such as that in Iraq. What they are going to help us develop is remote operation capability. This will allow us to operate

the equipment in a covert manner and to keep our soldiers and

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personnel sufficiently distant from the process so that, if any explosion occurs, they will not get blown up.

We find that TSWG has very accessible and user friendly Web

site, and it is often the starting point of any project like ours. This

project, by the way, was in response to a broad agency announcement. It has broad appeal, but the near-term deployment and

where TSWG is providing focus is in the high-threat regions.

As a member of the TSWG Web site, we are kept aware of the

opportunities through the broad agency announcements. Our first

submittal, like everybody’s, is a quad chart. We provide a concept

drawing of the idea, a description of how it would meet an operational capability that’s been asked for, and it gives TSWG a rough

order of magnitude of cost, schedule, and deliverables. This onepage document responds to—is supposed to be responded to in as

little at 45 days and sometimes takes longer, several months. I

think everybody else has described the next step, which is a white

paper, which also takes some time, and a proposal. We understand

that TSWG often has something in excess of 12,000 quad charts,

and it’s pretty daunting, to say the least. We believe that TSWG

does an effective job of processing the high volume of interest, but

I think as most companies will tell you, we wish the process could

be faster.

Often, large amounts of time can transpire between various

stages of the proposal process. In our case, this project has taken

over a year from quad chart to contract.

TSWG has taken a number of initiatives to host meetings to discuss the upcoming projects and to educate companies how to be

more effective in the proposal process. This is certainly one example of how TSWG is trying to speed up the process. In addition to

speeding up the process, we have two recommendations that could

be addressed by TSWG in order to make their process more effective. First, we believe that more detailed feedback on why quad

charts or white papers are rejected would be helpful to submitters.

Submitters would be better prepared for the next time.

Second, there appears to be a preference for funding a lot of the

small projects and very few larger projects, and we believe the emphasis should be on the right technology to meet the demand of the

requirements proposed by the operating organizations.

From our vantage point, we find the relationship with TSWG

very beneficial to both parties. The people appear to be quite competent technically; they’re dedicated, hard-working, and we also believe they are extremely busy and juggle multiple projects. Many

of the issues that we feel are important today could be mitigated

by additional staff. TSWG serves a vital role in helping companies

like ours develop new technologies, and we are looking forward to

our new project.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mastronardi follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Mr. deGrazia.

Mr. DEGRAZIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Tierney. It is

a pleasure to appear before you today. Accompanying me are several of our members, including two who will testify as well. One of

them is Larry Borey of HDR from Orlando, FL, and Ken Ducey of

Markland Technologies. Also accompanying me are a number of

other HSIA representatives, including Bruce Aitken, who is HSIA’s

president, Yasmin Chirado Chiodini of Intelliorg, who is the executive director of HSIA’s Florida chapter and southeast regional center, Hank Close of ITS Federal, and others.

The Homeland Security Industries Association was organized in

November 2001, and formally launched about a year ago. Right

now, we have about 400 members, ranging from the largest defense

contractors, the names of which everyone here would recognize,

through mid-sized firms, to startups, and even some incubator companies. Our representatives here reflect this cross-section.

Now, in my oral statement today, I’m going to summarize the

views and recommendations of HSIA and then ask that our complete written statement be included in the record of this proceeding. The Association’s views represent, of course, a consensus of

HSIA and not the opinion or the particular views of any one member. After my presentation, both of the HSIA member firms who

were invited by the subcommittee to testify will comment on their

own experience with TSWG and generally on their experience with

Federal and State procurement in the Homeland Security area.

Now, generally, HSIA wishes to commend Secretary Ridge and

the Department of Homeland Security on a successful launch of

this massive new department last January. Given that the significant increases in funding for Homeland Security only began to become available last March, we believe that DHS has moved quickly

to implement Homeland Security improvements. Now, of course,

HSIA members and other companies in the HLS industry, not to

mention first responders in those State and local governments, are

frankly frustrated with the pace of HLS funding and the early reliance on sole source procurements. We attribute this, however, to

the evolutionary pace of developing a new Federal department and

the organizational challenges that are understandably associated

with such a development.

Now, with respect to TSWG and Homeland Security procurement

generally, we have the following recommendations: First, we think

very highly of the abbreviated procurement process used by TSWG,

and we think it should be followed by Homeland Security procurements generally at the Federal level.

Second, we think that TSWG’s separate procurement Web site,

www.bids.tswg.gov, should be used as a model for separately posting Federal Homeland Security RFPs, RFIs, and RFQs.

Third, TSWG’s dedicated Web site for its procurements should be

more clearly linked to the DHS Web site.

Fourth, the Department of Homeland Security should organize a

series of seminars around the country to educate firms about

TSWG. In our own organization, we held a meeting to discuss our

testimony before the subcommittee, and we asked our members

how many of them had worked with TSWG and how many of them

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were even aware of it. It was only a very small minority, frankly,

who had even heard of TSWG let alone worked with them.

Fifth, we believe that greater use should be made of the Small

Business Administration’s offices around the country to educate

firms about TSWG.

Sixth, Congress should appropriate additional funding for TSWG

in order to permit it to conduct debriefing meetings with firms who

unsuccessfully send equipment or technology to TSWG, and also to

implement a debriefing system with respect to unsolicited equipment or technology sent to TSWG. We don’t expect that 12,000 people will be talked to, but we do believe that the ones that got close

should be given an opportunity to be told what they did wrong and

how they could do better the next time.

Seventh, we believe the incidence of Federal and State Homeland

Security sole source contracting should decrease. You have a very

large group of Homeland Security providers, and we don’t believe

that it should be concentrated in the hands of one or two companies, even if those companies are members.

Eighth, we believe the administration should consider an inneragency Homeland Security contracting summit further to the goal

of creating a harmonized Homeland Security procurement system.

Ninth, Congress should authorize and the administration should

implement a system of security cleared industry advisors from each

major area of Homeland Security.

Tenth, the Department of Homeland Security should much more

frequently conduct the very successful industry days in order to

educate industry regarding DHS goals and plans regarding HLS

procurement.

And, finally, the DHS should attempt to collect State and local

HLS procurement information and post it on the dedicated HLS

Web site recommended above.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much. That is very helpful.

[The prepared statement of Mr. deGrazia follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Ducey, even though you are first among equals,

it is still 5 minutes.

Mr. DUCEY. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Maybe an extra second.

Mr. DUCEY. Chairman Shays, distinguished members of the subcommittee. Good morning. My name is Ken Ducey; I am president

of Markland Technologies, a small company dedicated to delivering

integrated security solutions to protect our country against the

threat of terrorism, located in the great State of Connecticut. I

want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today

to discuss this matter of vital importance.

The U.S. Government and private industry have a long history

of working together to find solutions to the most vexing challenges

facing this great Nation. It is the entrepreneurial spirit of small,

not big, businesses that have led to the technological breakthroughs that have revolutionized our way of living. We all know

the stories of entrepreneurs who have overcome impossible obstacles to develop innovative products that have made the United

States the great nation it is. This time will be no different. If we

can create a system where the entrepreneur and the U.S. Government work together, the two most powerful forces in our country,

we will create a synergy unlike anything ever seen before. Even the

accomplishments mentioned will pale in comparison to what we

can achieve in the area of Homeland Security powered by cuttingedge technology.

The first step for developing a winning strategy is to create a

roadmap to success. This roadmap should be developed by a team

of experts from the private as well as the public sectors, representing all aspects of the issues. This effort requires the development

of a research environment which is driven directly by the field

needs of the end user. The innovative capability must be designed

from day 1 to fit into a system that meets the needs of the end

users and goes into cost effective volume production expeditiously

with proper systems for maintenance and training which are so key

to the end user success.

To accomplish this goal, DHS needs to develop in TSWG and

other organizations the type of mindset and organizational structure that has been utilized very successfully within the DOD. The

elements of such an organization are: An ability to invest in basic

technologies that can lead to fundamental technical advantages in

order to create substantive capabilities. The formation of working

groups that would advocate technologies together. The definition of

strategic challenges in detail that cross multiple threat spectrum

scenarios. Support for the conceptual integrated system solutions

which incorporate new capabilities. Testing of such promising capabilities in large-scale proof of concept demonstrations. Working

closely within the different branches of DHS and the Office of the

Secretary to broker the necessary emotional commitment to the implementation of these particular capabilities.

Namely, it is all about integration, integration at all levels and

with all parties involved from end user, vendors, etc. It is this philosophy of system level integration that is employed by our company Markland Technologies when we endeavor to produce integrated solutions for container inspection, border security, air transVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:57 May 04, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00131 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\92393.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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portation, and military force protection. No single company can

solve these problems, and, therefore, industry consortiums will be

fostered by TSWG to produce solutions that incorporate substantive

capabilities along the best of breed system integration capabilities.

A quick look around the industry will reveal that many disruptive technologies are hidden within small businesses and little

known research facilities, while much of the best of breed system

integration capabilities are found within large Fortune 500 companies. Therefore, small companies must be brought together with

large companies to create the necessary capabilities to reduce the

terrorist threat. Neither function by itself will prove adequate to

stay ahead of the terrorists or to properly counter their God-given

ingenuities.

In closing, I would like to provide one small example of our experiences with the successful research and development of border security and military force protection technology, this technology behind Markland’s Vehicle Stopping System. For many years now,

the San Ysidro border crossing, the busiest border port of land

entry into the United States, has had to cope with attempts at illegal entry by port runners. Undeterred port runners provide illegal

entry for immigrants, drugs, illicit materials, weapons, and possibly terrorists into the United States. The INS required a unique

solution that would stop the cars but not cause fatalities to the occupants of the vehicle or border agents. Markland Technologies

worked with the INS to create, install, and successfully test the Vehicle Stopping System [VSS]. This net can capture a car at speeds

in excess of 50 miles per hour with no harm whatsoever to the occupants of the vehicle or border agents. The VSS is now a prime

example of a disruptive capability that can greatly help to counter

potential threats to the border. Unfortunately, without a systems

level implementation into all entry/exit vehicle lanes, the VSS will

sit in storage as a prime exam of what happens when you do not

bring together all the components of the roadmap to success.

We at Markland Technologies look forward to contributing to the

future success of TSWG and the DHS by working collaboratively to

develop the best technology solutions for decreasing the terrorist

threats currently facing the United States.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ducey follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Borey.

Mr. BOREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Tierney. My

name is Lawrence Borey with HDR. We are a national architect engineering firm. We have 80 offices and 3,500 employees around the

country, one in White Plains, close to your district, and one in Boston. We also have a wholly owned subsidiary called HDR Security

Operations, which is headquartered in Orlando, FL.

My testimony today will be related to facility security rather

than individual technologies. We have had many years of experience with many Federal agencies, both military and domestic. We

are the principle architects for the renovation of the Pentagon, and

many of the technologies developed over previous years by other

firms are being incorporated into the improved security of that important building.

Our experience is that planning, vulnerability assessments, policies, and training are often more critical than hardware procurement for facilities security. And too often, first responders, local

governments, State governments jump into hardware procurement

for security without doing the necessary vulnerability assessments

and planning.

We believe that DHS needs a strong central procurement directorate and are concerned that the procurement directorate to date

seems to be a subset of the management under secretary. We don’t

think it’s been given enough visibility. Our experience with DHS

constituent agencies has been favorable, however, and we look forward to continuing to provide services for architect engineering to

the newly created Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement which combine three agencies before that.

The existing procurement processes, however, of the constituent

agencies should not be interrupted while the DHS develops its own

acquisition regulations. And we also urge that DHS acquisition regulations incorporate the Brooks Act, which is Form Part 36, for architect engineering services which was—the champion for which

was Chairman Brooks whose portrait is on the wall there.

We are concerned about the inadequate competition for many

new initiatives in DHS, and our experience is that some security

initiatives have been sole sourced there the GSA supply schedule.

Complex analysis such as vulnerability assessments are too important and too numerous in terms of the number of critical infrastructure components to rely on the capacity and capability of a

single firm. One particular example that I will note was the procurement for port security as vulnerability assessments. There are

50 major ports and many hundreds of minor ports in the United

States. The Congress very specifically said that the Coast Guard

should do a vulnerability assessment on major ports. In order to

get up, get going quickly, the Coast Guard chose a single contractor

off the supply schedule. It is our information at the latest that the

contract is behind schedule for meeting the vulnerability assessments in all those 50 ports.

We’ve also submitted a preliminary proposal for a national

backup 911 system to the Office of Homeland Security. We received

little encouragement from OHS, so we have not further developed

it.

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I would be pleased to answer any questions, and I am happy to

submit this testimony.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Borey follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you for all your patience, because this is a

large panel. I’m going to first go to Mr. Tierney, and he will ask

some questions, and then I have a number of questions I want to

ask. Thank you for your testimony.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

I want to thank all of you. This has been an informative panel

and very helpful. I note the heavy Massachusetts influence. And

despite the fact that there is one gentleman from Connecticut, I say

that. I am so proud that many of the innovative that are coming

out, are coming out with some connection to Massachusetts or from

Massachusetts. We have some wonderful businesses there.

Mr. SHAYS. We eat off the crumbs off your table, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Yes, you do, sir. But you are eating well these

days.

I had a few ideas and things I wanted to explore if we had the

time. One is, all of you I assume that are in a business developing

something, a patent, or somehow otherwise protect the end product. Would that be a fair assumption? I was interested in Mr.

Sword’s statement that you want to make it open licensing so that

others may still take availability. And you are firmly in favor of

that from your comments. Is that something you think we should

require of all contracts done with government money, or something

peculiar to what you are doing?

Mr. SWORD. I want to make sure I’m not misunderstood, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Or misquoted.

Mr. SWORD. TSWG is defining a common architecture by which

all competitors’ robotic platforms and tools will interoperate. This

does not mean that we are willing to give away our IP and allow

other people to produce the intellectual property that we have developed in-house. But we are on board with their attempt at defining the future of robotics such that multiple vendors can provide

equipment that will play well together.

Mr. TIERNEY. Fair enough. Then let me ask, anybody that wants

that.

Mr. SHAYS. Would the gentleman just suspend for a minute?

Would you move your robotic creature right in front of us so we can

see this? That’s perfect. Thank you.

Now, tell us what this thing does.

Mr. SWORD. This vehicle is configured as an explosive ordinance

disposal robotic tool. The arm you see on it has an 80 inch reach,

it has a 300 power zoom camera with illumination on the end of

it. At the second joint you will see that there is a gripper. The lift

capability on this arm is 15 pounds working in the near vicinity

and 5 pounds at full extension. It was designed under contract with

U.K. Ministry of defense as a solution to one of their high tech

next-generation tools. This is a good example of requirements-driven design.

It is as tall as it is. Why? Because it needs to be able to look into

the upper bins of an aircraft. It also has several preset poses on

it that assists the operator. This is what I cite as an example of

the next generation. It takes some of the burden off of the operators for EOD because they are no longer controlling joint-by-joint

control on an arm, but the arm is going to preset poses, and it does

what we call resolved motions, so they can actually fly the gripper

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or fly the camera and the joints will respond appropriately and

they don’t have to understand what each joint angle is going to be.

The technology has finally caught up with science fiction, and it allows us to off-load the operator to be able to more effectively accomplish the job.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. And do you get paid to play with that?

Mr. SWORD. I get paid for a lot more than that.

Mr. TIERNEY. I’m sure you do.

My question, then, for those of you who want to answer this, is,

what, if anything, is the appropriate thing for the funding and to

the government to then ask back from the companies that receive

that funding when they have a successful commercial product?

Mr. SWORD. I would like to answer that, sir. In this case, the

TSWG funding is letting us take this particular technology from an

integrated payload that only functions on our chassis and wrap the

TSWG common architecture around it so that it can be provided to

the other vendors and can be purchased by bomb squads to use on

existing chassis that they already have. That way, I’m not forcing

them to buy a complete system from me, but through TSWG funding, I create this common architecture interface on this arm and

then make it available to my competitors to augment the existing

equipment that the bomb squads have already invested dollars

into.

Mr. TIERNEY. Does anybody else care to answer that?

Mr. SAWICKI. A good example of how this process works I think

was in the development of these clothing systems. When we had

the first award from TSWG, there was no standard in place for

first responder protective clothing for these particular end users.

And through the research that was done through TSWG and funding that was provided by our corporation and other firms, we were

able to provide the National Fire Protection Association in Boston

a template of the testing they required to establish the national

standard for these kinds of piece of equipment. So we would not be

very happy to give up intellectual property to anybody else. We felt

that the synergism that came from the government and various

agencies within the government and various private companies

working together allowed us to have a national standard that is

now in place that, as he said, is sort of a common architecture for

everybody to do procurements to. I think that’s very useful.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. deGrazia.

Mr. DEGRAZIA. Yes. Now, typically, the government shares with

the developer the intellectual property of something that is developed under a government contract. But the government cannot

itself then do anything with that property, can’t give it to a third

party, for a certain number of years. So there is a system like that

in place as we speak.

Mr. SHAYS. If the gentleman would just suspend a second. What

good does it do to have the property rights if you can’t use them?

In other words, it doesn’t make sense to me.

Mr. DEGRAZIA. Well, the government does get an opportunity to

use it; it just does not get an opportunity to use it right away and

set up a third party in competition with the original developer. It

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can do it after a period of time, after the original developer has had

an opportunity to use it himself.

Mr. TIERNEY. And I think somebody mentioned on the earlier

panel that, should you go out of business or something of that nature, the government has then retained the rights to then proceed.

Mr. DEGRAZIA. Yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. BOREY. There is one other aspect to this that needs to be

taken into account. Sometimes the technology we develop needs to

be secure so that it can’t be misused, either in another facility

where it wouldn’t function as well or by a way of disarming the

technology. And particularly, entrance security or physical security,

we designed the standards for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to develop Federal prisons. And these were modular systems that could

be used in a variety of places. Obviously, they are used in different

temperatures, different humidities, so there were ranges of

usability that had to be developed into them. And, of course, we

also didn’t want them to—the technology to get out so that they

couldn’t be used for people to enter or get out without proper permission.

Mr. TIERNEY. Rightfully so.

Mr. Sawicki, you talked about some barriers to that. And one

thing that you mentioned was there were people, I thought you

said there were people that were purchasing your product, end

users, or products—competitive products that weren’t up to the

standard of your product. And you thought that should be corrected

in some way that we are not now doing it.

Mr. SAWICKI. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Would you expand on that a little bit for me.

Mr. SAWICKI. Yes. I think when the Congress has appropriated

funds, there has been guidance given to the States as they go buy

equipment. They say, you should meet national standards with

your claim. Let’s just look, for example, at a suit like that. The critical interfaces of the suit are around the mask and at the cuffs and

the closures. And if you go out right now to one of your departments up there and you see somebody with duct tape stuck on different places, what they are attempting to do is bridge the gap or

interfaces between these pieces of equipment.

Now, if you were to go in with a sprayer—and the national fire

protection association test specifies a spray test—none of those duct

taped gaps will pass, reliably pass a spray test, whereas these systems, since they were designed together as a system, will. And you

can see, if you are out in the field, if somebody sprays some noxious

toxic technical and you don’t want dripping down your chin down—

well, you can see where it ends up—or in your cuff the same way,

then you have to grab somebody.

Mr. TIERNEY. So communities are choosing to buy something that

is substandard?

Mr. SAWICKI. Well, I think they are not educated as to the standard right now. And because the funding is sort of broad, you know,

just go buy what you want, basically.

Mr. TIERNEY. Excuse me. You are telling me that our funding is

so broad. I mean, I’ve seen some of these things, and they don’t

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ing might say, here is some Federal money, go buy a product. We

don’t say, go buy a product that is up to such and such standards

or better?

Mr. SAWICKI. Well, when I sat on the interagency board, we were

trying to transition to the next level, once the standard was in

place, to require people to buy to a standard. And that’s happened

over the last couple of years. And I think as—I just urge you, as

the funding catches up in the next cycle, to follow the interagency

board’s recommendations, which are to purchase to recognized

standards.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK.

You also mentioned, Mr. Sawicki, while I have you, that you had

a project going; you had the picture up there for the burn situation.

Mr. SAWICKI. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. And that was serving a particular need that had

been identified to you that was, I assume, fairly pressing if it made

it all the way through the process to be funded. But then you said

it was stopped for lack of funding.

Mr. SAWICKI. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. What happened?

Mr. SAWICKI. We went through a 1-year development phase in

which we met all our milestones, and we believed we had a design

that would have met all the requirements. It just wasn’t funded

past that. And so we don’t have the capability in this country right

now, in my opinion, to respond to any kind of an agricultural outbreak.

Mr. TIERNEY. Was there any communication to you as to why

that wasn’t funded, why they didn’t choose to move forward on it?

Was there a competitor coming up with an alternative?

Mr. SAWICKI. No, sir. TSWG actually worked very aggressively

with us trying to secure additional funding to try to get a prototype

made. We actually went even up to Canada trying to get some

money from Canada. And I have to commend the TSWG people especially for really working with us on that. My understanding was

there just wasn’t a sufficient budget.

Mr. TIERNEY. I guess I’m interrupting you, I’m sorry. But, Mr.

Chairman, it would seem to me that TSWG would be the one to

make the decision what the priorities are. It goes back to my question of the earlier panel: If you have made a decision that this is

a priority, why do you stop? Obviously, there are other things being

done. And if this is in the pipeline, you don’t stop, you get it done,

unless the price is so far out of control it just doesn’t strike a balance there and you no longer can meet that criteria. We will have

to look into that. I am just struck by that.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m trying to nail down a few things; and Mr. Tierney

was getting to it, so I was happy he was asking these questions.

I want to understand, first off, should I view you as scientists

creating a product or as entrepreneurs developing a product? How

do you each view yourself? And let’s go down Dr. Patel. Maybe

both.

Dr. PATEL. I consider myself both scientist and entrepreneur.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to come right back to you.

Mr. SAWICKI. I would answer yes to both of those.

Mr. SWORD. I believe that’s the correct statement, both.

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Mr. MASTRONARDI. I would say ditto.

Mr. DEGRAZIA. And I would say that our members are from both

areas and consider themselves both.

Mr. DUCEY. Entrepreneurial.

Mr. BOREY. We are both. We have scientists, engineers, technicians.

Mr. SHAYS. But among yourself, I’m just trying to understand.

Mr. BOREY. Personally, I represent the company; so I am neither

a scientist nor an entrepreneur.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough. When you develop an idea, my first reaction would be, there is a market for this idea so why do I need

the government? I can develop this product, and I can make money

off of it because there is a market. Am I assuming there isn’t a

market? Or do I assume that you are so small that you don’t have

the capabilities? Walk me through why you need the government.

And I’d just as soon go right up the line here. In fact, what I am

going to do is I’m going to go every other one so we don’t have to

keep passing the mic while we are waiting. So I’ll go to you.

Dr. PATEL. When we get good ideas, the risk of developing entirely new product is so high that small companies cannot afford

it. So we often go to the government.

Mr. SHAYS. I see all nodding your head. If you have something

that you would just add to it.

Mr. Sword.

Mr. SWORD. As I mentioned in my statement, Mr. Chairman, the

target market really doesn’t support large investments in revolutionary technology. So it is the infusion of the money from the U.S.

Government that helps make the breakthroughs occur. The market

itself just isn’t going to allow me to sell enough of these robots to

ever pay for the research and development.

Mr. SHAYS. In your case, I can see that. But can’t you price it

in a way that gives you a return? Or even then, it’s still not going

to?

Mr. SWORD. We are attacking other markets that offer more lucrative return on the investment, and the technologies can cross

those boundaries. But to specifically develop a tool to dispose of

bombs is such a small market that I don’t think the technologies

would ever exist without some push.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Ducey.

Mr. DUCEY. Well, our organization has a number of members

that are very large; they are in the billion-plus dollar range. And

those have no problems developing their technology and getting it

ready for the marketplace. They have very large R&D departments.

But when you get down to the mid size and the small companies

that make up a large percentage of our group, they simply cannot

afford to put in all of the funds necessary to develop—not even

something as sophisticated as this, but something perhaps a little

less sophisticated. And yet the need is still there. And that’s why

they look to the government.

Mr. BOREY. The Federal Government is just one of a number of

clients that we have to upgrade security operations. If you will notice from page 4 of our written statement, we also provide these

services to health care facilities, to universities, museums, and private enterprise, including the railroads.

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Mr. SHAYS. But you didn’t really speak to the government funding technology. You were speaking about government contracting,

which is, do you want to share anything as it relates to technology

as it relates to your area?

Mr. BOREY. Well, we do have some areas that the government

funds some of the technology that we use in installing the security

systems in the facilities. But generally that’s not our business.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Sawicki.

Mr. SAWICKI. I would like to give you an example—maybe that’s

an unfair thing to do—but from my past life. I used to work at Arthur D. Little in Cambridge in technology development. And at one

time there was a government contract area that was very aggressive looking at nuclear flash protection. In other words, the magic

sunglass that would stop a nuclear flash. And we went out to look

to optics people.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me understand why that’s necessary. In other

words, someone could be blinded?

Mr. SAWICKI. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. Sawicki. In other words, the nuclear flash could be so bright

and so fast that it would blind particularly a pilot, they were particularly interested in pilots. We went out to optics manufacturers,

and they said, well, we’re really better off from a market perspective developing sunglasses for surfers because we get a much higher return on investment. There really aren’t that many nuclear

flash requirement sunglasses out there, and we are just not interested in working with you. Now, we went even trying to fund these

people with some seed money to get going, and there still was very

little interest in going after that. So we had to go back and find

small specialty companies to provide funding, directed funding.

And I think you see the same thing in all these areas, that even

if the market seems very clear, those of us in the business there,

when we go to our investors, our board and they come in and say,

OK, what are you going to invest in this year? And I say, well, our

return in investment 3 years out is going to be a 7 percent yield;

but we could open a fast food restaurant here in Germantown, Md,

which is rapidly growing, and make 30 percent. They are going to

tell us to get into the restaurant business.

So the technology business is just different from others.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. MASTRONARDI. Yes, I think I pretty much echo what everybody else has said. For us, we look at two markets. One is obviously if there is a return on the investment, and we look at markets and determine whether or not a product that we develop with

our own money will have a reasonable return. But very often we’re

also problem solvers. In the case of our Z Backscatter Van, we have

been asked by the Army to come up with a variant on that technology that they can deploy in Iraq. Now, we don’t normally have

to develop technology that can handle 135 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures during the day, withstand dust storms, fit on to C–130

aircraft, be operated remotely from up to 11⁄2 kilometers away.

These kinds of things, we look to the government because the return on that investment for developing that kind of capability is

just not there. And we really think that’s—if we can use some of

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the government money to support that part of it, then we have a

good marriage of good products.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. DUCEY. It’s all who the customer is. I mean, in most of our

products they do have commercial applications, but those commercial applications are multiple years out. In the meantime, a lot of

things have to be funded to create those applications, and typically

the government is the first customer for these new technologies.

Just going back to your example with the housewife, for example.

If she does have a solution to a problem that she is aware of——

Mr. SHAYS. I said homemaker.

Mr. DUCEY. I’m sorry. Homemaker. If she is a homemaker and

has a technology that she believes can solve a problem, I doubt in

most cases that she would have the resources to take that product,

develop it into a prototype, test it, etc., to get it through. That’s

where the government can come in and help. We do a lot of business with a lot of end users at the borders of the country, etc., that

also have these amazing ideas, but they have to have a facility in

order to get them prototypes developed, etc.

Mr. SHAYS. I have a confession. At this hearing, I said homemaker. The first time I used that story I said housewife and——

Mr. DUCEY. I was there, too.

Mr. SHAYS. And I was corrected quickly. And rightfully so.

Mr. Patel—Dr. Patel, I’m sorry. Your cards that you developed,

tell me first who the market was for these.

Dr. PATEL. I’m sorry?

Mr. SHAYS. Who is the market for these? Who is the potential

buyer?

Dr. PATEL. There is no buyer other than the first responder or

the government.

Mr. SHAYS. In many places this would potentially be folks at

Customs?

Dr. PATEL. Yes. It would be mainly the first responder, police,

firefighters, who in case of dirty bomb explosives, they have to respond first.

Mr. SHAYS. So that would be local, potentially State and Federal?

Dr. PATEL. Pretty much local——

Mr. SHAYS. A pretty wide market.

Dr. PATEL. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. And let me be clear. You developed this with funding.

How much funding did you receive?

Dr. PATEL. First it was funded by the Navy. They were the first

to come out with SBIR phase one and two, which is about three

quarters of a million dollars.

Mr. SHAYS. Of a million?

Dr. PATEL. Yes. And then there was some problem with developing darker color at lower temperature and lighter color at higher

temperature.

Mr. SHAYS. You had to keep perfecting it?

Dr. PATEL. And that’s right. And so we solved some of those

problems.

Mr. SHAYS. Is this ready to go in operation?

Dr. PATEL. It is almost ready. In that form, yes, it is ready to

go in operation.

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Mr. SHAYS. And in the process of doing research, the government

is assessing its value?

Dr. PATEL. Yes. That’s where we are. The Navy is evaluating, so

is TSWG.

Mr. SHAYS. In other words, at one point you are developing the

product. The next thing, though, the government is trying to see

if it meets its standards. Is that—and this was not done at the request of the Federal Government. You did it; you basically came to

the government.

Dr. PATEL. No. The original proposal was solicited by the Navy.

That they were looking for an instrument type to distribute in case

of nuclear explosion.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Dr. PATEL. And then TSWG saw that this could be used by first

responders in case of a dirty bomb.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Dr. PATEL. The Navy and our government must have foreseen

that could be such a need. So the Navy had solicited the proposal.

Mr. SHAYS. But the government hasn’t bought this yet; they just

helped you fund it?

Dr. PATEL. TSWG has bought 6,000 of them.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. How do you decide ultimately—this seems a little bit on the side, but it is related. How does the government decide what they are going to pay you? And how do you decide whether you are willing to sell? And, by the way, can you refuse to sell

afterwards?

Dr. PATEL. The government——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me state all the questions I have. Can the government set the price? First, can you set the price? Can the government set the price? And can you refuse to sell this product once the

government helped you develop it?

Dr. PATEL. First thing, I would not refuse for the price or it

would not matter, because if the Nation needs it, so it is my pleasure to provide this to the Department.

Mr. SHAYS. No, you are not going to do it for nothing.

Dr. PATEL. No. Of course I would not do it for nothing. I’m in

business and would like to make a profit.

Mr. SHAYS. Certainly.

Dr. PATEL. But still, if the government needs it or cities——

Mr. SHAYS. Maybe I’m giving something too hypothetical for you.

Maybe I’m suggesting something where you don’t think that would

happen. You think you will arrive at a price. But maybe one of you

could tell me how the government sets a price. Mr. Sword. I mean,

Mr. Mastronardi. I’m sorry.

Mr. MASTRONARDI. OK. For our equipment, which is pretty much

capital equipment, very often the price is set for the government

based on our cost. The government has the right to come in and

audit our books and find out how much the cost, and then we’re

are able to put a modest fee on that and that establishes the price.

And we have to use that as the lowest price as always sold to the

U.S. Government, and any other commercial price has to be somewhat higher than that anywhere in the world. So that’s one way

the price can be established if you have not established a commerVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:57 May 04, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00148 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\92393.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cial price for it. But typically, if it’s developed by the government,

that’s the way the price is developed.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t know if it was in response, Mr. Tierney, Mr.

Sword responding to your question or someone else, where you

were talking about purchasing a product that didn’t work. Who

was——

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Sawicki.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Sawicki. Thank you. When the committee went

to Los Alamos at the lab there, they were showing us detection

equipment that they said was being sold to the government and no

one had ever consulted with them as to how effective it was. And

they showed us different products, and some worked better than

others and some didn’t work well at all, and yet the government

was purchasing some of this, which was kind of intriguing to me.

Were you suggesting that the government is buying certain products that just simply don’t work?

Mr. SAWICKI. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. OK.

Mr. SAWICKI. I said they work less effectively than others. It depends if you have nothing.

Mr. SHAYS. In other words, if they had done more research, they

would have found there was a better product. It just didn’t get

their attention.

Mr. SAWICKI. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. What this triggers in my mind is, if TSWG is basically helping you do the research, does it also become a stamp of,

a house for goodkeeping stamp of approval? Does it become something that you kind of go to whoever you are selling and saying

this has gone through this process and they like it and whatever?

Mr. SAWICKI. Yes. That’s a very effective marketing tool.

Mr. SHAYS. Does anybody else want to respond to that? Yes.

Mr. DEGRAZIA. Under TSWG, it’s as my colleague next to me has

said. Under TSWG, you have a set of cost, and then they—TSWG

and you determine what the price is going to be based on the cost.

But with regard to SBIR, there is an upper limit for each phase

of development, and so those programs are entirely different as to

how they fund and set a price for a product.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Just out of curiosity, I would like to

know an experience, if any of our witnesses actually submitted a

proposal that was not solicited? You have. Would you tell me what

the experience was on that in terms of how you were treated and

how it was dealt with, as opposed to those that were solicited.

Mr. BOREY. Well, I mentioned to you that one of the things we

did as a result of September 11 was develop with a software company a concept, a preliminary proposal for a national 911 backup

system which would be located initially in one part of the country,

we were considering Offutt Air Force base as one potential place

mainly because of the connection by fiberoptics there throughout

the country. And we brought it to the Office of Homeland Security.

As a matter of fact, HSIA helped us do that, and we are still in

a preliminary proposal face. And we gave them an idea of how it

would work, and basically they said, that’s nice, we are not able to

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respond to that right now. And we’ve never heard anything back

from them on it.

Mr. TIERNEY. So you don’t know if it’s dead or just in limbo?

Mr. BOREY. Yeah. We have not gone any further to develop the

proposal further.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Mastronardi, you talked about spreading the opportunity. I

think you mentioned that you thought there were too many small

projects being funded and not enough larger being funded. Is that

a fair restatement of what you said?

Mr. MASTRONARDI. Yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. What leads you to that conclusion, and what do

you think ought to be done about it? How could they do something

about that?

Mr. MASTRONARDI. Well, I think that we may not have all the

facts to back that up; but it appears that the money, you know, at

least initially was spread around a lot to try a number of ideas.

You know, in order to really have an impact on some of the mission

objectives from the Department of Defense, you really need to focus

and execute well throughout the process. And that requires a fair

amount of money.

Very often, we find that if we come in with a proposed solution

that requires a fair amount of money in the millions of dollars, that

it doesn’t get funded. And I guess that’s been our experience; that

if you come in with something less than a million dollars, your

chances go up dramatically.

Mr. TIERNEY. Regardless of what the apparent need is? Again, I

think this would be another area; if we had some priorities, that

would help us to decide whether or not we ought to spend more

than a million because it is just that important versus something

else.

Mr. MASTRONARDI. And that’s fair.

Mr. TIERNEY. And I guess it goes back to that.

There was also some mention by a couple of you. Mr. deGrazia,

I think you mentioned it as well as Mr. Mastronardi, and I’m not

sure who else, about sole sourcing on that. And I was a little confused, because Mr. Sawicki I think you mentioned you had five contracts on that. I was watching to see if there was a reaction from

you, from the aspect of saying that it goes to the same people all

the time or not. Does somebody want to talk about that? Maybe

you want to talk about a little bit, Mr. Sawicki, Mr. deGrazia, and

tell me what we do about that or how it is that you come to the

conclusion that you think that it’s a problem.

Mr. SAWICKI. I think it’s the larger contracts that tend to be sole

sourced. The smaller ones seem to be spread out, as you said,

among a lot of different firms. But occasionally you will see something in the newspaper you’ve never even heard about, never had

a chance to bid on where, you know, so and so got the $500 million

contract to do a nationwide integration of something you say we

didn’t even see that. You couldn’t even get on the team. And I

think that’s happened quite a bit since September 11. And in a lot

of different agencies, whatever process has been used to do that selection, I’m not sure, but it is frustrating.

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Mr. TIERNEY. That was a huge issue of contention of this committee when we were dealing with the establishment of Homeland Security Department, and there were many of us—and I think the

chairman might have even joined us on that one—who thought

that was not a good process to go. There’s a provision for that in

the Department of Defense contracts. Many of us thought that was

not the way to go to any excessive degree in this, and we think that

the language did open it up too much. I would assume that we are

going to revisit that in future iterations of the legislation. But it

was a very conscious thing that was done. There was a large debate about it; there was a wide chasm disagreement amongst people on that. So you are hitting right on what I thought you were

talking about at any rate.

Let me just ask one last question, and then, Mr. Chairman, I

have to go if you are going to stick around. But Mr. deGrazia, you

talked about the need for forums, maybe with the Small Business

Administration’s participation and others, to educate you industry

out there on that. Are there any efforts like that going on now that

you are aware of? Have you had contacts with the SBA to start initial discussions on how that might be done? Or is that just an idea

that you broached today?

Mr. DEGRAZIA. It’s an idea that our members have come up with.

Now, the industry days that have been done by the Homeland Security Department are tremendously successful in educating industry about what’s out there. But too many of the technologies and

too many of the technology companies, particularly the small or

mid-sized ones, simply do not know what is out there and do not

know what is available. What our members are saying to us is, we

need some sort of a forum where we can find out more about what

we can do. As I’ve mentioned in my testimony, we threw out the

name of TSWG to a number of our members and got a very small

response.

Mr. TIERNEY. The chairman was afraid to even say it.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s true.

Mr. TIERNEY. I’m going to have to excuse myself. I want to thank

everybody very much. I know that some of you are coming over to

my office later, and Mr. McDermott behind me will be happy to accompany you over there. Thank you all very, very much. I appreciate your testimony.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

I’m just going to go for 5 minutes. I would like to just note for

the record that Mr. McCallum has stayed to hear what you all are

saying, and I appreciate that very much. And I think that we have

other representatives from the first panel. So we do thank them.

I’m getting a sense that TSWG is kind of like the small businessman’s place to go to get support. If you are big league, you don’t;

you go to DARPA and go elsewhere. I don’t know if that’s an accurate way to think of it. But you all have kind of mentioned defense,

and I get a little nervous because I don’t want the Defense Department to rule. In this issue, we are talking about Department of

Homeland Security. And I would love to know whether you intend

to come back to TSWG in future projects, and whether you intend

to come back on anything you have thought about that simply—Mr.

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Borey has mentioned, he went on his own accord on some proposal

he had.

But you all seem to have responded to proposal rather than to

have thought of one yourself and said we want to move forward.

So I would like to have a response to that. Are you planning to go

back with other items, do you think it’s going to be a waste of time

if you go on something that hasn’t been solicited? And so on?

Dr. PATEL. My personal experience is very professional. I’m dealing with very professional people. And if there is a proposal or concept I have that can be funded by TSWG, I would definitely submit

a proposal.

Mr. SHAYS. And you would go there first before going to the Department that might have the direct focus on that innovation?

Dr. PATEL. I have to use my judgment. If there is direct focus

and it could be funded by that agency, I would consider both and

then have to select one.

Mr. SHAYS. In other words, is TSWG going to be your first place

to go or your second place? And that doesn’t mean something bad

about them, it just means that you may feel that you have a more

specific issue that you can get a better response. I’m going to ask

it this way. Would you rather go to TSWG first to be turned down,

or go to the Department first to be turned down? Which one do you

go to first and why? That’s really what I’m asking.

Dr. PATEL. If it is related to Homeland Security or so, I would

go to TSWG first.

Mr. SHAYS. So, Homeland Security, you’d go to TSWG first.

That’s how you’ve kind of sorted that.

Dr. PATEL. Yes, sir.

Mr. DUCEY. I’d go to the Department of Homeland Security first,

only because the only way TSWG works is if we find the need first.

So if we—there has to be a—much like on the first panel, they said

there is a lot of technologies out there; a lot of them are really cool,

but a lot of them don’t solve a single problem. Where we have

found the best luck is if we can talk with either end users or people

within the Department of Homeland Security who actually have a

specific problem that we can match up to a technology, whether

still in development or seen through its fruition, then go backward,

and try to figure out how to get the funding for it. At that point

in time, we would go to TSWG.

Mr. SHAYS. But it almost is like you have a resume for a job; you

want to speak to someone, you just don’t want them to see your

document. You want to talk to someone, a real person. Maybe I’m

reading something more into it. In other words, are you saying you

are doing your homework with someone else before you go to

TSWG because you’ve only got one shot there and it’s a piece of

paper and you want to make sure you kind of set the groundwork?

Mr. DUCEY. Exactly. That’s one. And the other is, any technology

can be used in multiple areas. So if we can find the real need out

there for this technology and then work backward, it’s just more effective.

Mr. SHAYS. So you think TSWG has a broader view?

Mr. DUCEY. Yes. If anything, I think they have too broad a view.

If that’s where—if we talk to Department of Homeland Security

and they have a very narrow view on exactly what’s needed, then

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we can take the technology and match that up, then we can go

back to TSWG with that.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just persist a little more. In the process of

going to Homeland Security, you feel kind of you’re lobbying first

before someone who ultimately is going to—and there’s nothing

wrong with that, but I’m just trying to see how you work within

the system.

Mr. DUCEY. I’m not sure——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just finish the question. Are you basically

saying that you would go to Homeland Security, get to talk to

someone who is a real live person; then you would go to TSWG,

have a better idea, it has a broader approach; maybe someone will

identify a use somewhere else, but you have a person in the room

that already knows a little bit about what this is about? Is that

part of your approach?

Mr. DUCEY. Exactly. I just don’t know—not that it has never

happened or couldn’t happen, but I’m not sure, just alone, a small

company such as ours going to TSWG would get much exposure or

recognition, attention. But if we went to TSWG as a small company

such as ours and also had some sort of advocate or sponsor within

the Department of Homeland Security, that’s where it would work

the best.

Mr. SHAYS. I saw a few nodding of the heads here. Do you want

to speak to that?

Mr. MASTRONARDI. I think that’s accurate. If you have a client

within the government who has a specific need and you have an

idea to fulfill that need, if you had to work it through TSWG, it

would have to fit into requirements that got into a broad agency

announcement, or even somehow supported as an unsolicited proposal. But if you are going in through broad agency announcement,

you are going in against 12,000 other people with one sheet of

paper, and sometimes it’s much more expeditious to go directly to

the people who need the technology the most and can really define

exactly what they need. And, you know, that would be the first

preference, because if you are a problem solver, that’s the quickest

way to have a path to solution. But I do believe that TSWG also

serves a purpose of trying to collate the general requirements and

needs of the Federal Government and putting them into categories

that people can respond to to get a broader, you know, technology

base for Homeland Security.

Mr. SHAYS. What we are trying to do in part with this hearing

is to make sure that the significant number of ideas that are being

presented don’t get lost. And kind of what I’m hearing is, though,

you still need an advocate, or you’d feel a little more comfortable

if you have an advocate within TSWG. So, as much as on paper you

have this one piece of paper. You’d feel a little better if you got

someone who says don’t overlook this proposal here.

Mr. MASTRONARDI. I think that is accurate. With 12,000 or so respondents to a broad agency announcement, it is really a pretty

daunting problem to sift through all of those and say, OK, based

on one sheet of paper this is the technology of choice to fund.

Either it needs an advocate that says this is exactly what we

need, or there needs to be, as someone suggested, a couple of other

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pages attached to this, that if it sounds even close to being of interest, then there is a little bit more to read initially before it gets——

Mr. SHAYS. But if I now do the inverse, what that suggests to

me is if someone doesn’t do that we may be losing some really good

proposals, because what you seem to be suggesting, and it seems

logical to me, one page is a pretty difficult way to present your

case. You may lose it. It may be a great idea.

Any other comments on this?

Mr. DEGRAZIA. Yes, Mr. Chairman. One of the issues, the general

issues that our members have, is with the whole unsolicited proposal process itself. It is not generally well understood. And I can

attest from the other side as well, because I used to use—we used

to work for the Defense Department, and we would get unsolicited

proposals through all sorts of channels and it was very clear that

the people who were submitting them didn’t have any idea of how

the process worked.

In talking to my members in my current role, some of them do,

of course, but not a lot of them know what is going to happen to

an unsolicited proposal when it gets somewhere or if it gets somewhere.

Mr. SHAYS. Let’s do this. Let’s finish up here. Is there any closing

comment that any of you would like to make? Anything you think

needs to be put on the record?

Mr. DUCEY. Just to add on what you just said. I believe that

there needs to be different—there is no way possible, I don’t think,

that TSWG could ever have the resources to judge all of these different proposals.

And that is where, I think what we are really asking you to do

is reach out into other areas, whether it be private industry,

whether it be the end users or industry experts, to try to really

help them go through that filtering process that you are talking

about, whether the ideas are solicited or unsolicited.

Mr. SHAYS. You know, it would be interesting if they had a process to do this. And then they had another group that could take

a second look, and maybe this is even something that a GAO report

could do, to see if we are losing some good ideas, and have another

panel of experts look at it and say, you know what? You should

have tried this and then brought that individual or individuals forward to make their proposal and see if we are missing some good

ideas.

That would be interesting. Thank you for that suggestion. Any

others?

Mr. SAWICKI. I would like to echo the comment before about

there is a certain cost range that TSWG seems to be comfortable

in funding, typically under a million dollars for an effort.

Mr. SHAYS. That is OK?

Mr. SAWICKI. I think that is OK. But a lot of times will, I won’t

say dumb down, that is the wrong thing, will condense the scope

of a proposal to try to get it under a million dollars for perhaps a

technology that really will cost a lot more. And I will just throw

one out on the table, because it is an extraordinarily difficult one,

which is biodetection and analysis. It is really hard. Everybody wants a $50 card like the radiation

one that will tell you 20 different biological agents.

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Mr. SHAYS. You think this is going to cost $50.

Dr. PATEL. No. It is under $10.

Mr. SAWICKI. That one is $10. The one that they always use for

bio is 50.

Mr. SHAYS. I think you are asking too much. If I was negotiating

with you I would say 5. It is a great idea, but you are going to sell

a lot of these. I am sorry.

Mr. SAWICKI. Some of these things are extraordinarily difficult,

some of these technology challenges, and a lot of times you will

come in and try to narrow your scope to just look at something so

you can get into a range that TSWG would want to fund. And you

will get a comment back saying, well, you didn’t address all of the

issues or something like that, and it is really difficult sometimes

to try to do that within that budget range.

So I think it almost would be a—part of the Department of

Homeland Security or some other agency, a way that would fit into

the TSWG process so they can say, well, that is not within our

scope, it ought to go somewhere else. So I think the debrief process

and some direction back, especially to small companies that was

mentioned earlier, would be very useful.

Mr. SHAYS. I agree with that, and I will just repeat what you are

saying. I think it would be very helpful to have a debriefing. We

have done that with some constituents who have applied for Federal grants, and they haven’t gotten it and they wanted to know

why. And going through that process has really helped them the

next time around.

Any other comment, or should we call it to a close here?

Mr. SWORD. I will try not to drag it out, Mr. Chairman. But if

I could make the comment that I think TSWG does, at least in the

field that I address, in bomb disposal, surround themselves with

experts that understand what the end users need. I think this is

very key when they are trying to make their decisions on which

technologies to fund and not to fund.

The people I work directly with are really contract workers supporting TSWG, but these guys have survived 23 years of disarming

bombs. So they understand very well what the end user wants,

would not like, would tolerate, would not tolerate. I think that is

something to be said in their favor, and that they do actively go

after the talents that understands those fields well. And they are

the interactions with the contractors, they are helping guide the direction that the technology is going to head to.

I think that is a very positive thing, that if the Department of

Homeland Security is going to try to duplicate the process, they

need to do similarly, by surrounding themselves with the experts

that understand what the end users need.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Any other comment? Thank you all very,

very much. You have been an excellent panel. Thank you. Appreciate you coming to Washington to help us out.

I just want to thank two people on the staff, Joseph McGowan,

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who is a detailee from the Department of Labor IG. And we thank

him. And Mary Holloway, intern during the summer from Washington and Lee University. And we thank her as well. I would like

that part of the record. Thanks for accommodating us.

This hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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