Congress showed continuing interest in the development of IOCs shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003, funding was appropriated specifically for such a center in Charleston, South Carolina. That center, known as Project SeaHawk, brought together agencies, including the Coast Guard, CBP, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Navy, and state and local law enforcement agencies, to improve transportation security. Shortly thereafter, the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2004implementation and use of joint operational centers for security at certain United States ports. required the Commandant of the Coast Guard to report on the The Coast Guard and the Navy also recognized the need to work together to ensure port security and developed local joint harbor operations centers (JHOC), which were to share information, improve awareness of port activities, and coordinate operations. These were originally created by local Coast Guard and Navy units, before the SAFE Port Act IOC requirement was enacted, to increase the security of naval vessels at their home ports. Later, in August 2005, the Coast Guard and Navy signed a memorandum of agreement that officially established JHOCs to build upon the resources available to each service to produce better awareness of conditions and activities in ports with a large Navy presence. Eventually, JHOCs were established in Hampton Roads, Virginia; Jacksonville, Florida; San Diego, California; and Seattle, Washington. While these JHOCs were originally established as a means to improve information sharing and operational effectiveness between the Coast Guard and the Navy, other federal, state, and local port partners also began to operate within these centers. For example, CBP and the San Diego Harbor Patrol were also located in the San Diego JHOC. In addition, the Bush administration expressed the need for port security stakeholders to work together. In particular, the National Strategy for Maritime Security, issued in September 2005, stated that agencies working to ensure maritime security should colocate in multiagency centers to facilitate direct interaction and efficient use of limited resources. Additionally, the strategy directed the agencies to develop well-defined coordination protocols and communication mechanisms for operating jointly. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard began an initiative to help facilitate meeting its needs related to IOCs. In September 2005, the Coast Guard sent a request to DHS to authorize the initial phase of an acquisition project called Command 2010. Command 2010 was to improve the Coast Guard’s capabilities for surveillance, decision and mission support, and multiagency collaboration. To improve the Coast Guard’s surveillance capabilities in critical ports and coastal regions, Command 2010 was to provide a network of radar, cameras, and other sensors. To improve its decision and mission support capabilities, the Coast Guard planned to develop an information system—called WatchKeeper—that would provide situational awareness to Coast Guard personnel through displays of information gathered from sensors, as well as Coast Guard and port partner information sources. To improve collaboration, Command 2010 was also to include a web-based portal to allow port partners to access the same data displayed for the Coast Guard on WatchKeeper and allow joint access to Coast Guard and port partner operations schedules. The portal was to include collaboration functions, such as document management and message boards. Given these capabilities, Command 2010 was to support both IOCs where in-person coordination is possible and the virtual operations center concept as envisioned by the joint operations center working group. Virtual operations centers are in place when information sharing and operational coordination with port partners at separate locations occurs through the use of tools—in the case of Command 2010, and as it evolved later to Command 21 and the IOC, on an Internet web portal. Then, in 2006, the SAFE Port Act was enacted, which mandated that IOCs for port security be implemented at all high-priority ports within 3 years. Under the SAFE Port Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security was to utilize, as appropriate, the characteristics of existing centers and provide for the participation, along with the Coast Guard, of other federal, state, local, and private-sector port security stakeholders, among other things. Amendments to the IOC provisions in the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010 included adding that such centers should provide for the physical colocation of the Coast Guard and other stakeholders, where practicable. Among other things, the 2010 act also required that the IOCs include information-management systems and sensor-management systems. In June 2007, shortly after passage of the SAFE Port Act, the Coast Guard began a broader initiative to coordinate port-security efforts. Specifically, CBP and the Coast Guard formed a joint operations center working group that was to improve near- and long-term efficiency and effectiveness of joint field operations. The working group visited select Coast Guard and CBP field units to gather firsthand knowledge of Coast Guard and CBP working relationships. According to the working group, the site visits revealed interagency coordination was already occurring in ways deemed most appropriate by local field commanders. Also, the working group conducted a survey of Coast Guard and CBP field commanders that highlighted, among other things, that in-person collaboration is desirable for more-effective Coast Guard and CBP relations, but that virtual operations centers should be considered when in-person coordination was not feasible. The Coast Guard received $60 million of funding that Congress directed to the IOC project in annual fiscal year 2008 appropriations to begin the process of establishing IOCs. The Coast Guard received an additional $14 million in congressionally directed appropriations from fiscal years 2009 through 2012 for IOC implementation. The Coast Guard did not meet the October 2009 deadline enacted in the SAFE Port Act to establish IOCs; however, the Coast Guard is establishing IOCs at all 35 of its sectors, although none of them have achieved full operating capability. According to the Coast Guard’s Chief of IOC Implementation and its Information Sharing Executive Agent, continued support is needed from DHS to increase port-partner participation and the success of the IOC initiative. DHS has recently begun to support efforts to increase port-partner participation and further IOC implementation. The Coast Guard did not meet the SAFE Port Act’s deadline to establish IOCs at high-risk ports within 3 years of enactment, in part because it was not appropriated funds to establish the IOCs until fiscal year 2008—14 months after enactment of the law, and because the definition of a fully operational IOC was evolving during this period. According to the Coast Guard, unexpected and unreliable funding sources created the challenge in scheduling and meeting planned milestones as each change required cost and schedule adjustments. However, funding was provided nearly 2 years before the required deadline, and in our analysis of the Coast Guard’s actions leading up to the deadline, development of the IOCs was not prioritized until the deadline passed. The Coast Guard made several changes to its efforts to develop IOCs from 2007 through 2009. For example, in its July 2007 letter to Congress on the budget and cost- sharing analysis of implementing the IOC requirements of the SAFE Port Act, DHS reported changing the name of the project—from Command 2010 to Command 21. In this letter, the DHS Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs stated that Command 21 was the Coast Guard acquisition project that was to provide the IOC capability required by the SAFE Port Act. This acquisition project was to provide information- management tools to improve interagency coordination, enhance awareness, and automate anomaly detection. Command 21 was to accomplish these tasks by facilitating interagency cooperation, information sharing, and joint, port-level operations through the use of WatchKeeper; as well as providing a sensor network and facility upgrades to facilitate multiagency operations and provide space for port partners. Figure 1 depicts the type of information that WatchKeeper provides to the Coast Guard and port partners. In March 2008, the Coast Guard reported that physical colocation with port partners was preferred, but interagency coordination and cooperation would also occur virtually. These virtual interactions would be facilitated by sharing information through WatchKeeper. However, 36 of 39 port partners we spoke with expressed views on physical and virtual colocation, and 31 of those 36 port partners expressed benefits to being colocated with the Coast Guard. For example, one port partner working at the IOC in Charleston, South Carolina, stated that sharing space with the Coast Guard allows for easier communication with Coast Guard officials because they are just down the hall. He also said that the Coast Guard's policy of rotating officials every 3 years could hinder the success of virtual IOCs because relationships with the local Coast Guard representatives will not have been established. Another port partner we spoke with said that the virtual IOC in Hampton Roads, Virginia, has been effective because there are weekly in-person meetings that allow trust to be built, which facilitates the virtual meetings conducted using WatchKeeper. While there are clearly disadvantages to not being colocated, Coast Guard officials stated that funding levels prevented it from pursuing physical IOCs beyond locations in San Francisco, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Wilmington, North Carolina. The Coast Guard communicated changes to Command 21 in a 2008 letter to congressional appropriations committees. In the letter, the Coast Guard Commandant further refined the implementation of Coast Guard efforts to meet its IOC mandate. In particular, he stated that the Coast Guard planned to install the WatchKeeper information-management tools, the sensor network, and facility upgrades at the 24 Coast Guard sectors that encompassed the nation’s high-priority ports. All 35 sectors would, at a minimum, receive WatchKeeper. Additionally, user feedback based on the initial installations would be used as a guide to finalize requirements. Also in 2008, the IOC plans changed from having a separate collaboration portal to share information on WatchKeeper with port partners to building that communications mechanism as a part of WatchKeeper.