According to a report from the inspector general of the department only one out of 479 employees are able to use the common channel that was set up for secure radio communication. What’s even more worrying is that investigators concluded more than half of the radios were not properly configured. This means that the radios that were supposed to help employees of Border Patrol, Customs and of other agencies did not work properly without the needed configuration.
Although DHS did not quite achieve its inter-operable goals of communication it managed to improve how emergency communications work since the year 2003. The $430 million spent so far on the existing radio infrastructure, maintenance and on the actual radio devices is not lost. DHS officials could still come up with a solution that will turn around the current situation.
