Homeland Security Department Chief Information Officer Steve Cooper's announcement last month that his agency is collaborating with the Justice Department on a national data-sharing model may have had a familiar ring.
As director of Maryland's Office of Homeland Security, it's Dennis Schrader's job to ensure that the state is doing whatever it can to minimize risks, prevent attacks and be prepared to respond against terrorism throughout the state's 12,400 square miles.
Contractors supplying new technologies to the Homeland Security Department are renewing their push to ease what they feel is an arduous application process for the department's Safety Act liability protections, and to strengthen the protections for trade secrets they disclose in their applications.
The Government Accountability Office and the DHS Inspector General are raising warning flags on several big-ticket IT projects at the Homeland Security Department.
The pilot program for exiting travelers, which is part of U.S. Visit, will help evaluate the usefulness of biometric data and technologies in verifying visitor identities.
A lack of clear strategies and concepts of operation is one of the major barriers holding up progress in information-sharing within homeland security, Martin Smith, director of information sharing for the Homeland Security Department's Office of the Chief Information Officer, writes in a new report.
Biometric iris scans may be ineffective for up to one million people in the United Kingdom who are blind or have visual impairments such as cataracts, according to a report from the London School of Economics & Political Science.
Only six European Commission countries that currently enjoy visa-free travel to the United States are expected to meet an Oct. 26 deadline for initiating biometric passports.
The Transportation Security Administration has addressed fully only one of the 10 areas of congressional interest related to development of its Secure Flight airline passenger screening system.
The U.S. Agency for International Development is holding a pre-proposal conference Tuesday for contractors interested in bidding on its five-year, $100 million Famine Early Warning Systems Network project.
Transportation Security Administration officials made misleading statements in 2003 and 2004 about their collection and transfer of personal information on 12 million airline passengers in order to test a new screening system, according to a report by DHS's inspector general.
The Homeland Security Department is hampered in its efforts to verify the identities of visitors at U.S. borders by the need to check with multiple database systems, the department's Inspector General Richard Skinner said in a new report.
The prospect of people carrying many different biometric identification smart cards, each recognized by a single workplace or venue, doesn't seem so smart.<p> That's why the federal government is nudging ? some say pushing ? the biometrics industry toward greater interoperability, to make the cards scannable by multiple systems.
The Bush administration's dramatic boost in IT spending at the Homeland Security department may be a signal that the sprawling, two-year-old department is ready to consolidate some of its major programs and systems.
Congress is considering giving the Homeland Security Department secretary authority to loosen privacy regulations with an eye to creating a national identification card, a move the DHS privacy chief opposes.
The State Department and the Government Printing Office in the next few weeks will decide which and how many companies will provide electronic passports for U.S. citizens.
In the year since terrorists bombed commuter trains in Madrid, the Bush administration "has done next to nothing to protect passenger rails," Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said at a press conference March 10.
The United States, Canada and Mexico by 2010 should create a common North American security perimeter with combined visa, visitor screening, cargo inspection and political asylum policies, an independent task force last week recommended.
