‘Beleaguered’ Homeland Security agency wastes $57 million on failed computer contract?

In 2007, while FPS fell under the management umbrella of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it began developing the Risk Assessment and Management Program (RAMP), a computer program intended to streamline the management of those security contracts and oversight of the guards themselves. RAMP was to be FPS’s largest contracted program, projected to roll out July 31, 2009, at a cost of $21 million.

In August 2008, a contract for that $21 million deal was “competitively awarded” to Booz Allen Hamilton. Homeland Security Today reported in April that the deal was to last seven years.

Despite systemic problems with RAMP and a series of warnings and criticisms from auditors and whistle-blowers, government bureaucrats in both Republican and Democratic administrations kept the program alive.

Separate reports, by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in July 2011 and DHS’s Office of Inspector General in March 2012, found that agency bureaucrats, led by FPS Risk Management Division Director Susan Burrill, overspent on RAMP and were far behind schedule — with nothing to show for the $21 million outlay, spent in its entirety after just two years.