The Border Patrol developed its 2004 Strategy following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as a framework for the agency’s new priority mission of preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States and to support its traditional mission of preventing aliens, smugglers, narcotics, and other contraband from crossing U.S. borders illegally. The 2004 Strategy was designed to facilitate the buildup and deployment of agency and border resources and to consolidate the agency into a more centralized organization. Border Patrol headquarters officials stated that the 2012-2016 Strategic Plan will rely on Border Patrol and federal, state, local, tribal, and international partners working together to use a risk-based approach to secure the border that uses the key elements of “Information, Integration, and Rapid Response” to achieve Border Patrol strategic objectives. Our past reviews of border security programs contained information on the progress and challenges related to implementing these key elements. Our observations are as follows. Obtaining Information Necessary for Border Security. Critical to implementation of the 2004 Strategy was the use of intelligence to assess risk, target enforcement efforts, and drive operations, according to the strategy. As part of their intelligence efforts, CBP and Border Patrol worked to develop and deploy the next generation of border surveillance and sensoring platforms to maximize the Border Patrol’s ability to detect, respond, and interdict cross-border illegal activity. Border Patrol headquarters officials reported that the new 2012-2016 Strategic Plan also has a focus on information that provides situational awareness and intelligence developed by blending technology, reconnaissance, and sign- cutting and tracking, to understand the threats faced along the nation’s borders. Our prior work reviewing CBP’s efforts to deploy capabilities to, among other things, provide situational awareness along U.S. borders provides insights that could inform Border Patrol considerations in implementing its new strategic plan. As of fiscal year end 2010, Border Patrol reported having substantial detection resources in place across 45 percent of the nation’s border miles. The remaining 55 percent of border miles—primarily on the northern and coastal borders—were considered vulnerable due to limited resource availability or inaccessibility, with some knowledge available to develop a rudimentary border control strategy. Our review of Border Patrol 2012 operational assessments also showed concerns about resource availability to provide the information necessary to secure the border. Across Border Patrol’s 20 sectors located on the northern, southwest, and southeast coastal borders, all sectors reported a need for new or replacement technology used to detect and track illegal activity, and the majority (19) reported a need for additional agents to maintain or attain an acceptable level of border security. Additionally, 12 sectors reported a need for additional infrastructure. DHS, CBP, and Border Patrol are continuing to focus attention on development, acquisition, and deployment of technology and infrastructure needed to provide the information necessary to secure the borders, with priority for the southwest border. Our past work highlighted the continuing challenges the agency faced implementing technology and infrastructure at the U.S. land borders. Technology. We previously reported that in January 2011, after 5 years and a cost of nearly $1 billion, DHS ended the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet), a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar technology effort aimed at securing U.S. borders because it did not meet cost- effectiveness and viability standards. DHS developed a successor plan to secure the border—the Alternative (Southwest) Border Technology plan—where CBP is to focus on developing terrain- and population-based solutions utilizing existing, proven technology, such as camera-based surveillance systems, for each border region beginning with high-risk areas in Arizona. In November 2011, we reported that CBP’s planned technology deployment plan for the Arizona border, the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan, was expected to cost approximately $1.5 billion over 10 years. However, we also reported that CBP did not have the information needed to fully support and implement the technology deployment plan in accordance with DHS and Office of Management and Budget guidance, among other things.DHS determine the mission benefits to be derived from implementation of the plan and develop and apply key attributes for metrics to assess program implementation. DHS concurred with our recommendation and reported that it planned to develop a set of measures to assess the effectiveness and benefits of future technology investments. Infrastructure. In May 2010, we testified that CBP had not accounted for the effect of its investment in border fencing and infrastructure on Border fencing was designed to impede people on border security. foot and vehicles from crossing the border and to enhance Border Patrol’s ability to detect and interdict violators. CBP estimated that border fencing and other infrastructure had a life-cycle cost of about $6.5 billion for deployment, operations, and maintenance. CBP reported a resulting increase in control of southwest border miles, but could not account separately for the effect of the border fencing and other infrastructure. In a September 2009 report, we recommended that CBP conduct an analysis of the effect of tactical infrastructure on border security.with the Homeland Security Institute (HSI)—a federally funded research and development center—to analyze the effect of tactical CBP concurred and reported that it had contracted infrastructure on the security of the border.had not provided an update on this effort. As of May 2012, CBP Integrating Border Security Operations with Federal, State, Local, Tribal, and International Partners. Leveraging the law enforcement resources of federal, state, local, tribal, and international partners was a key element of Border Patrol’s 2004 Strategy and Border Patrol’s implementation of the strategy, on the northern and coastal borders where Border Patrol had fewer resources relative to the size of the geographic area, and on the southwest border where Border Patrol used the assistance of law enforcement partners to conduct surge operations in high-priority areas. Border Patrol headquarters officials stated that integration of border security operations will be a key element of the 2012-2016 Strategic Plan across all borders. Our prior work reviewing coordination among various stakeholders with responsibilities for helping to secure the border provides insights for consideration as Border Patrol transitions to its new strategic plan. We previously reviewed Border Patrol efforts to coordinate law enforcement resources across partners on the northern border and on federal border lands. On the northern border, we reported in December 2010 that federal, state, local, tribal, and Canadian partners operating in four Border Patrol sectors we visited stated that efforts to establish interagency forums were beneficial in establishing a common understanding of border security status and threats, and that joint operations helped to achieve an integrated and effective law enforcement response. However, numerous partners cited challenges related to the inability to resource the increasing number of interagency forums and raised concerns that some efforts may be overlapping. We found that DHS did not oversee the interagency forums established by its components. Further, we also reported that while Border Patrol and other federal partners stated that federal agency coordination to secure the northern border was improved, partners in all four sectors we visited cited long-standing and ongoing challenges sharing information and resources for daily border security related to operations and investigations. Challenges were attributed to continued disagreement on roles and responsibilities and competition for performance statistics used to inform resource allocation decisions. DHS established and updated interagency agreements designed to clarify roles and responsibilities for agencies with overlapping missions or geographic areas of responsibility, but oversight by management at the component and local levels had not ensured consistent compliance with provisions of these agreements. We previously reported that governmentwide efforts to strengthen interagency collaboration have been hindered by the lack of agreement on roles and responsibilities and agency performance management systems that do not recognize or reward interagency collaboration. Thus, we recommended, among other things, that DHS provide guidance and oversight for interagency forums established or sponsored by its components and provide regular oversight of component compliance with the provisions of interagency Memorandum of Understandings. DHS concurred with our recommendation and stated that the structure of the department precluded DHS-level oversight, but that it would review the inventory of interagency forums through its strategic and operational planning efforts to assess efficiency. DHS officials stated that in January 2012 the department established an intercomponent Advisory Council to address our recommendation that DHS provide oversight of compliance with interagency agreements. We also reported in December 2010 that while there is a high reliance on law enforcement support from partners on the northern border, the extent of law enforcement resources available to address border security vulnerabilities was not reflected in Border Patrol’s processes for assessing border security and resource requirements. We previously reported that federal agencies should identify resources among collaborating agencies to deliver results more efficiently and that DHS had not fully responded to a legislative requirement to link initiatives— including partnerships—to existing border vulnerabilities to inform federal resource allocation decisions. Development of policy and guidance to integrate available partner resources in northern border security assessments and resource planning documents could provide the agency and Congress with more complete information necessary to make resource allocation decisions in mitigating existing border vulnerabilities. Thus, we recommended that DHS direct CBP to develop policy and guidance necessary to identify, assess, and integrate the available partner resources in northern border sector security assessments and resource planning documents. DHS concurred with our recommendation and has taken action to formulate new policy and guidance in associated strategic planning efforts. In our November 2010 report on interagency coordination on northern federal borderlands in Border Patrol’s Spokane sector and southwest federal borderlands in Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, we reported, among other things, that Border Patrol, DOI, and USDA had established forums and liaisons to exchange information. However, while information sharing and communication among these agencies had increased in recent years, critical gaps remained in implementing interagency agreements to share intelligence information and compatible secure radio communications for daily border security operations. We reported that coordination in these areas could better ensure officer safety and an efficient law enforcement response to illegal activity. In addition, there was little interagency coordination to share intelligence assessments of border security threats to federal lands and develop budget requests, strategies, and joint operations to address these threats.