Border Patrol has reported that its primary mission is to prevent terrorists and weapons of terrorism from entering the United States and also to detect, interdict, and apprehend those who attempt to illegally enter or smuggle any person or contraband across the nation’s borders. Geographic responsibility for the southwest border is divided among nine Border Patrol sectors, two of which are in Arizona—Tucson and Yuma. Each sector has a varying number of stations, with agents responsible for patrolling within defined geographic areas. Border Patrol collects and analyzes various data on its enforcement efforts and the number and types of entrants who illegally cross the southwest border between the land ports of entry. These data include apprehensions and seizures of drugs and other contraband. The Border Patrol collects and maintains data on apprehensions and seizures in DHS’s Enforcement Integrated Database (EID). This database also includes an asset assists field in which agents can specify whether an asset, such as SBInet surveillance towers, contributed to apprehensions or seizures. CBP’s OTIA was created to help ensure CBP’s technology efforts are properly focused on the mission and are well integrated, and to strengthen CBP’s expertise and effectiveness in program management and acquisition. OTIA’s mission is to conduct and facilitate effective identification, acquisition, and life-cycle support of products and services while driving innovation to improve CBP’s performance in securing U.S. borders and facilitating lawful movement of goods and people. OTIA manages the implementation of the Plan and is acquiring seven technology programs in the Plan for use by Border Patrol in Arizona. The goal of the Plan is to achieve situational awareness along the Arizona border where the Plan’s technologies are deployed. For fiscal year 2013, OTIA budgeted $297 million in development and deployment funds for the Plan’s seven technology programs. Table 1 describes the Plan’s programs, and appendix II provides a photograph of each technology program. The overall policy and structure for acquisition management outlined in DHS Acquisition Management Directive 102-01 and its associated Instruction Manual 102-01-001 includes an Acquisition Life-cycle Framework to plan and execute the department’s acquisition programs. According to the directive, DHS adopted the Acquisition Life-cycle Framework to ensure consistent and efficient acquisition management, support, review, and approval throughout the department. As shown in figure 1, DHS’s Acquisition Life-cycle Framework includes four acquisition phases through which DHS develops, deploys, and operates new capabilities. During the first three phases, the DHS component pursuing the acquisition is required to produce key documents to justify, plan, and execute the acquisition. These phases each culminate in an Acquisition Decision Event where the Acquisition Review Board—a board of senior DHS officials—determines whether a proposed acquisition has met the requirements of the relevant acquisition framework phase and should proceed. The Acquisition Review Board is chaired by the Acquisition Decision Authority—the official responsible for ensuring compliance with Acquisition Management Directive 102-01. DHS classifies acquisitions into three levels that determine whether the Acquisition Decision Authority can be a Component Acquisition Executive or should be DHS’s Deputy Secretary or Under Secretary for Management.program is a Level 2 acquisition, which is overseen by the department, and the DHS Under Secretary for Management serves as the Acquisition Decision Authority. The other six programs in the Plan are Level 3 acquisitions, which are overseen by CBP’s Acquisition Review Board, and the Acquisition Decision Authority is a CBP official who serves as both the Assistant Commissioner for OTIA and Component Acquisition Executive. As of January 2014, CBP has awarded contracts for four of the Plan’s seven programs and has initiated or completed deployment of technology to Arizona for three of the four programs under contract, as shown in table 2. OTIA has developed a schedule for each of the Plan’s seven programs, and four programs will not meet their originally planned completion dates. OTIA established schedules for each program, serving as the original program plans with the required sequence of events, resource assignments, and dates for deliverables. However, as of March 2013, five of the Plan’s programs—IFT, RVSS, MSC, APSS, and UGS/IS—have experienced delays relative to their baseline schedules, as shown in figure 2. OTIA officials attributed program delays to various factors, including higher than expected numbers of proposals from vendors for some of the programs, system performance problems, and limited resources. In particular, OTIA officials stated that they initiated acquisitions for a number of the Plan’s programs around the same time, but OTIA did not have a sufficient number of acquisition staff with sufficient experience and skills to review contract proposals or manage the programs, a fact that contributed to program delays.for both the IFT and RVSS programs, the source selection process to decide which vendor would be awarded the contract was extended because of a higher than expected number of proposals received from vendors and a limited acquisition workforce to review and process the proposals, including not having a dedicated contracting officer for each of the programs. In addition, for the MSC program, OTIA officials attributed delays to problems both vendors who were awarded contracts experienced with their systems, as previously discussed. OTIA took various actions in response to these delays, such as extending the scheduled contract award date for the IFT and RVSS programs and extending scheduled activities for the MSC program from July 2014 to September 2015. For example, OTIA officials stated that According to best practices, in acquisition programs, agencies may make modifications to program schedules to reflect changes to programs; CBP has consistently updated each program’s schedule in response to program delays. However, we assessed OTIA’s schedules as of March 2013 for the three highest-cost technology programs—IFT, RVSS, and MSC—and found that these program schedules addressed some, but not all, best practices for scheduling. The Schedule Assessment Guide identifies 10 best practices associated with effective scheduling, which are summarized into four characteristics of a reliable schedule— comprehensive, well constructed, credible, and controlled. summarizes our assessment of the IFT, RVSS, and MSC schedules. Appendix III provides more detailed information on the description of each best practice and on the results of our assessment. GAO-12-120G. A schedule risk analysis is performed to calculate the amount of contingency time that is needed to complete the program on time. According to our overall analysis, OTIA at least partially met the four characteristics of reliable schedules for the IFT and RVSS schedules and partially or minimally met the four characteristics for the MSC schedule. For example: Comprehensive: OTIA’s schedule for the IFT, RVSS, and MSC programs partially met best practices in terms of being comprehensive. For example, our analysis found that all three program schedules reflected the work that needed to be accomplished for the schedules, and each schedule had duration estimates that at least substantially met best practices. The IFT schedule contained a clear start and a finish milestone, and the RVSS schedule contained at least a clear start milestone. However, the schedules for these programs did not meet other best practices in terms of being comprehensive. For example, the MSC schedule did not contain fields that map activities to a program work breakdown structure; and the schedules for the IFT and RVSS programs did not fully map all schedule activities to each program’s work breakdown structure in accordance with best practices. Moreover, the IFT and RVSS schedules did not include the level of detail expected to provide oversight of ongoing construction work, as activities associated with the construction work were reflected in the schedules as milestones, limiting OTIA’s ability to monitor the progress of these efforts. Specifically, these activities were reflected in the schedules as a milestone that was a point in time, rather than a range of time, as called for by best practices. In addition, resources were not assigned to some activities in all three schedules. According to best practices, a schedule without resources implies an unlimited number of resources and their unlimited availability. Best practices note that assigning resources to activities across programs can help prevent any future overallocation of resources. Well constructed: OTIA’s schedule for the IFT program substantially met the characteristic of being well constructed; the schedules for RVSS and the MSC programs partially met this characteristic. For example, our analysis found the IFT program schedule had few missing or incorrect logic links and the critical path—the chain of dependent activities with the longest total duration—was found to be a straightforward, continuous path of activities that depicted the effort driving the key milestones. Our analysis of the RVSS and MSC program schedules found that these schedules had no missing or incorrect logic links. However, we could not verify a reliable critical path that was continuous from the status date to contract award for these schedules. In addition, our analysis shows that each of the three programs’ schedules exhibited unreasonable amounts of total float—that is, the amount of time by which an activity can slip before the delay affects the program’s estimated finish date appeared to be overestimating true schedule flexibility. For example, 25 percent of the activities in the IFT schedule appeared to be able to slip at least 10 working months before affecting the final milestone of the program. Credible: OTIA’s schedules for the IFT and RVSS programs partially met the characteristic of being credible; the MSC program schedule minimally met this characteristic. For example, our analysis found that the IFT and RVSS schedules responded when significant delays were introduced into the planned activities in the schedules; that is, when we tested the robustness of the schedules by extending activity durations, forecasted dates recalculated appropriately. However, the MSC schedule responded to schedule delays in some instances but not in others, and some forecasted dates did not recalculate to account for changes we made in the duration of activities when testing the MSC schedule.