Audit Objectives

The objectives of the audit were to:

• assess the implementation of the IWN project, and

• assess whether DOJ legacy communication systems comply with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s requirements.

Scope and Methodology

We performed our audit in accordance with Government Auditing Standards and included such tests as were considered necessary to accomplish our audit objective. It should be noted that the Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General is a participant in the IWN project, but as noted in the introduction to this report the DOJ OIG comprises only 0.19 percent of the universe of potential IWN users. Therefore, the OIG's limited participation in IWN had no effect on our general audit scope, methodology, or results, and no OIG transactions related to IWN were included in our audit.

Our audit concentrated on, but was not limited to FYs 2000 through 2006. We conducted fieldwork at the Joint Program Office and the DOJ Wireless Management Office in Fairfax, Virginia, DOJ, JMD, Procurement Services Staff in Washington, D.C., the headquarters offices of the ATF and DEA, and the facilities of Seattle/Blaine Pilot Project site in the Seattle, Washington area. We interviewed the Chief Information Officers of DOJ, DHS, and Treasury and the Directors of the DOJ and DHS Wireless Management Offices. We also interviewed the DOJ Deputy Chief Information Officer Information Sharing, Deputy Directors of the ATF, FBI, and USMS, and an Assistant Administrator of the DEA. In addition, we interviewed the DOJ Spectrum Manager, the DOJ IWN Program Manager, and the DOJ Wireless Management Office Administration Officer. At the Seattle/Blaine Pilot Project, we conducted interviews with the FBI Special Agent in Charge, the FBI Telecommunications Manager, the Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal and FBI agents and deputy U.S. Marshals.

We examined pertinent documents, including the memorandum of understanding between DOJ, DHS, and Treasury; the Fiscal Year 2005 Program Plan; the IWN Strategic Plan for 2003-2008; the Program Weekly Status Reviews; the IWN Executive Status Reports; and the weekly Memorandum for IWN Seattle/Blaine Service Area. We examined DOJ’s FY 2006 Performance Budget for Narrowband Communications and other documents such as monthly reports of Obligation Analysis by Sub-Object Class.

We interviewed the Chief of the Spectrum Support Division of the Office of Spectrum Management at the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). We examined the Telecommunications Authorization Act of 1992 and the NTIA Narrowband Mandate of 1993. We obtained documents from the NTIA that discussed the process for requesting waivers and the proposed rule of the Frequency Assignment Subcommittee to prohibit waivers for wideband operations that interfere with narrowband operations. We also reviewed NTIA reports of frequency assignments and waivers for noncompliant frequencies.

We assessed the progress of the 3-phase acquisition plan to contract with one or more non-government vendors to build IWN across the country. We reviewed the proposals of the four vendors selected to compete in Phase 2 and interviewed component members who served on the management and technical evaluation teams. We also interviewed the Assistant Director of DOJ’s Procurement Services Staff.