U.S. Border Security at a Crossroads

Accenture was in a strong position even before the bidding began, according to documents and interviews. Its contracting team played a role in shaping the competition. "Limit the number of bidders, and streamline the procurement approach," Accenture officials recommended to Williams in August 2003, three months before the government began requesting bids, according to documents and interviews.

The US-VISIT contract with Accenture and its subcontractors exemplifies a fundamental shift in the arcane world of government contracting, said Steven L. Schooner, a procurement specialist at George Washington University. Increasingly, government is entering into "partnerships" with private companies.

Such partnerships can blur the lines between the government and corporations, Schooner and other contract specialists said.

In this case, the contractor and the government are working together without a clear idea of how the final virtual-border system will work or when it will be completed over the next decade. Such an arrangement is known as an "indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contract." The government can cancel the project at any point. The contractor is paid for specific tasks along the way, even if the overall system ultimately does not work.

For all those reasons, no one is certain of the final cost.

"Who knows what it will end up being, because the system hasn't been defined yet," said Accenture spokeswoman Roxanne Taylor, adding that the government has the final say. "Isn't that the system of checks and balances?"

Tightening the Borders

The US-VISIT program office, officially known as the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, started in July 2003. The network it is trying to build is being sold to the public by homeland security officials as the ultimate solution to the nation's chronic border problems.

The US-VISIT system must eventually cover nearly 7,000 miles of borders along Mexico and Canada, including more than 300 land, air and sea ports where travelers make more than 450 million crossings a year.

Copies of an Accenture presentation to US-VISIT officials obtained by The Washington Post describe a futuristic surveillance and intelligence network. The system they envision could rely on databases, digital cameras, face- and voice-recognition systems and electronic-fingerprint readers, all linked by computer. Homeland security officials promised that US-VISIT would communicate quickly and easily with other computer systems.

Eventually all foreign visitors will be required to electronically register their fingerprints and photographs at U.S. embassies and consulates, along with other personal details. That information will then be matched against terrorist, criminal and intelligence files to determine whether the travelers pose threats.

Prospective visitors who flunk the screening process will be denied visas. Those who pass will be allowed into the country and then checked when they leave to make sure they did not overstay their visit. US-VISIT must accomplish its mission without impeding commerce or tourism, according its mission statement.

For now, US-VISIT is relying on several aging and ineffective computer systems that were designed in the 1990s by contractors for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was merged in 2003 into the new Homeland Security Department.