The slow-motion disintegration of a Justice Department-led effort to create a nationwide land mobile radio system for federal law enforcement leaves many federal agencies back where they started when the program began in the first part of the last decade--with an aging and sometimes obsolete radio communications infrastructure.

In a DOJ office of inspector general report released last week, auditors say decisions by participating agencies in what was to have been a multi-department program to pursue their own wireless modernization efforts "have resulted in a lost opportunity." The Homeland Security Department pulled out from the program--known as the Integrated Wireless Network--in 2006, while Treasury officials told auditors that they wouldn't participate in future plans.

IWN lost funding in fiscal 2012 after having been built only within the national capital region and the states of Washington and Oregon. Auditors estimate IWN has cost $356.7 million since 1998, although DOJ estimates are lower; auditors say the department never clearly separated IWN costs within the account it used to pay for IWN development and legacy radio system operations and maintenance. General Dynamics became the IWN prime contractor in 2007.

Justice officials say IWN suffered from irregular and inconsistent funding, requiring them to make changes to the scope, objectives that deployment approaches. A 2007 implementation plan (the program didn't settle on a final approach until that year) called for appropriations of $200 million annually. Funding for the entire DOJ wireless communications budget line reached that amount only once, however--in fiscal 2009--and in most years, funding for legacy radio systems nearly equaled or greatly surpassed funding for IWN deployment.

That federal law enforcement needs an upgrade to legacy systems isn't in doubt, auditors say, citing facts such as the U.S. Marshals Service's primary reliance on FBI land mobile radio system sites. That led to a situation in Virginia in which an FBI telecommunications manager required his Marshals counterpart to ask daily for permission to use the system, and led to an incident in which the FBI kicked off its LMR network five Marshals radios in order to clear up network congestion.

Drug Enforcement Agency officials also told auditors that three major field offices--Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis--operate with analog systems more than 25 years old that are subject to disruption by bad weather. Some federal law enforcement agencies radios use the Data Encryption Standard rather than the more modern Advanced Encryption Standard and some also have radios incapable of over-the-air rekeying, leading to situations were federal agents relied on insecure communications, auditors say.

Auditors also raise concerns about IWN implementation in the national capital region, stating that the system lacks circuit redundancy and a consolidated dispatch center. Michael Allen, the deputy assistant attorney general for policy, management and planning, says in the department's official response to the audit that overlapping tower coverage provides "more than adequate" system redundancy and that the decision not to have a consolidated dispatch center "was an intentional configuration decision...based on an evaluation of risk, cost and the in-house dispatch capabilities available."

Nonetheless, auditors seem to suggest that circuit redundancy is still a requirement since the IWN national capital region towers are leased from the private sector, and costs associated with leasing have led to the elimination of some sites from the IWN network. As for the dispatch center, auditors say DOJ officials themselves have said that in order for the national capital region to have successful interoperability, a consolidated center will be necessary.

White House officials, in announcing that DOJ would not request funds for IWN in fiscal 2012 (a decision which officials in the DOJ office of chief information officer disagreed with, according to background sources) said law enforcement should investigate adoption of commercial 3G or Long Term Evolution wireless infrastructure. But, auditors note, commercial cellular technology "that will fulfill the needs of law enforcement agencies has yet to be refined."

For more:
- download the report, 12-120 (.pdf)

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