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Accenture Lands High-Tech Border Security Contract
Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, June 1, 2004; 4:40 PM
The Department of Homeland Security today awarded a contract worth up to $10 billion to Accenture LLC to oversee a massive program to track millions of foreign visitors to the United States as they cross land, air and sea borders. The project, officially called US-VISIT, is an ambitious effort to track foreign visitors using biometrics, such as digital photographs and fingerprints, to ensure they do not overstay their visas. Since the program went into effect in January, Homeland Security officials said they have used it to deny entry to suspected terrorists and arrest more than 500 wanted or suspected criminals. US-VISIT has processed more than 4.5 million people at the nation's largest international airports and seaports. The program's next challenge, largely to be undertaken by Accenture, is how to track the millions of foreigners who cross U.S. borders by land every day without slowing international commerce. "I don't think you could overstate the impact of this responsibility, in terms of security of our nation," said Asa Hutchinson, under secretary for Border and Transportation Security at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "If you look at the 9/11 terrorists, they came here in violation of our immigration laws." The win is a coup for Accenture LLC, the Reston, Va.-based consulting firm that split off from the Andersen auditing firm after an accounting scandal involving Enron Corp. in 2002. Accenture will be responsible for a massive expansion of the program. About 94 percent of all foreign visitors enter and exit the country at land borders. One of the major tasks will be to integrate into US-VISIT an existing program that places radio frequency tags on vehicles that regularly cross land borders. The challenge will be to ensure that customs and border protection officials are able to quickly identify visitors crossing the borders. The passes beam traveler information to border sensors as cars whiz across country lines, much as EZPass technology works at toll booths. "They selected us because we had a clear understanding for their vision of the future of border management for this country," said Eric Stange, Accenture's managing partner for defense and homeland security. Accenture's proposal centered around its concept of creating "virtual" folders for each foreign traveler that would electronically store visa application information, fingerprints, photographs, entry and exit dates, and the purpose of the visits. For travelers with a student visa, for example, the folder would also include relevant details such as the school and period of enrollment. Accenture also created a position for a chief privacy officer because the system will give inspectors unprecedented access to travelers' personal information. Originally conceived as an immigration program, US-VISIT is now being designed to integrate immigrations databases and to share information about millions of foreigners with a host of federal and state agencies. The program will enable Homeland Security officials to share information about individuals with the Department of Justice, Department of Transportation, Department of Commerce and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The contract is the largest yet awarded by the 18-month-old Homeland Security agency and is widely seen as a stepping stone to other big department contracts. Officials today declined to provide the total value of the five-year contract, saying it would range from $10 million to $10 billion, depending on how much funding the program receives from Congress, the agency's policy decisions and Accenture's performance. Homeland Security officials said Accenture bid $72 million to complete the first year's work, which includes helping the agency meet an ambitious Dec. 31, 2004 deadline to begin using radio-frequency technology to track foreign travelers at the 50 busiest land borders. By December 2005, all land border crossings must have the system. The program received $367 million for Fiscal Year 2003 and has received $340 million for Fiscal Year 2004. "That's why all of these companies are working so hard to really try to win these contracts," said Philip Finnegan, an analyst for the Teal Group, a defense research firm. "They all really see homeland security as a bit of a wild card but a real potential growth area." Homeland Security's Hutchinson said the agency chose Accenture based on its management and technical ability, its past performance with government contractors and the cost of the bid. Hutchinson said the fact that the company's parent unit, Accenture Ltd., is based in Bermuda was not a factor in the evaluation process. Accenture LLC is based in Reston, Va., and is a U.S. taxpayer, he said. The company beat out both Lockheed Martin Corp., the largest government contractor, and Computer Sciences Corp., a California-based technology services company. CSC declined to comment today and Lockheed Martin said it was "disappointed" by Homeland Security's decision.
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