NTIA’s waiver policy could undermine secure communication plans

The Department of Justice’s internal watchdog revealed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, overseer of a Bush administration plan to foster improved spectrum use by federal agencies, state governments and private-sector firms, granted more than 23,000 waivers over two years to allow law enforcement officials to continue operating wireless systems in a less efficient manner than mandated by NTIA in 1993.
The finding is included in a new DoJ inspector general’s report that warns plans to deploy a new nationwide wireless network for secure government communications is at risk of failing due to funding and management problems, a prospect that could hurt federal response to the next terrorist attack or natural disaster.
Inspector General Glenn Fine said the troubled Integrated Wireless Network project, designed to support 81,000 federal agents at Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Treasury, could cost $5 billion. However, given the advances in wireless and broadband Internet communications, policy-makers may well decide to dump the IWN program altogether.
The NTIA declined to explain its reasoning behind the waivers and actions regarding Justice Department wireless communications.
J.H. Snider, Research Director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program, said the NTIA’s handling of the matter leaves much to be desired and that he suspects the Justice Department is posturing for more congressional funding. Snyder said he regards the IWN as a dinosaur. “The whole system is incredibly inefficient except by 1993 standards.”
After granting thousands of waivers in 2005 and 2006, the NTIA changed course. In September 2006, according to the report, the NTIA’s Frequency Assignment Subcommittee agreed to a change that eliminates the waiver provision and directs the subcommittee to sort out unresolved conflicts between agencies involving overlapping compliant and non-compliant frequencies. Then, in October, it rejected the DoJ’s waiver request to continue operating on nearly 70 percent of its non-compliant frequencies.
In doing so, the NTIA may have made a bad matter worse.
“The DoJ’s failure to meet the NTIA narrowband mandate, coupled with NTIA’s recent denial of the DoJ’s request to keep operating on the non-narrowband frequencies means that DoJ law enforcement communications could be subject to interference from the narrowband operations of other agencies,” the report said.
When asked by the inspector general about the ability of law enforcement to change frequencies under such scenarios, the report said the DoJ’s spectrum manager replied the agency could not change radio channels without buying new equipment.
“The DoJ spectrum manager also stated that as a result of the NTIA subcommittee’s action, DoJ is elevating its request for waivers to the Department of Commerce’s acting assistant secretary for Commerce for communications and information,” the report stated. That official is John Kneuer, who was acting NTIA chief until the Senate confirmed his nomination last year for a permanent post.
The actions of the Justice Department and the NTIA raise a number of questions. Was the NTIA aware of the IWN project’s troubles identified by the DoJ’s inspector general when it granted more than 23,000 waivers of the spectrum efficiency mandate? Did the DoJ inform NTIA of IWN challenges when it sought the waivers? Also, why are the DoJ and federal agencies seeking (and receiving) funding for a secure integrated, interoperable wireless network premised on a legacy telecom design when debate is raging about the need for a next generation nationwide public safety broadband network for federal, state and local first responders?
New America’s Snyder said any attempt to continue pursing the IWN would be ludicrous.