The Washington Post has an article this morning that details severe contracting problems at the Department of Homeland Security. The Post describes the agency's efforts to oversee $15 billion in contracts over the last six years as having "failed."

The contracts wound up over-budget, delayed or canceled after millions of dollars had already been spent, according to figures and documents prepared by the House Committee on Homeland Security. A panel of experts is to testify today before the House Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight on how to fix problems with the DHS acquisitions process.

The experts are expected to discuss a number of high-profile screw-ups at DHS, including the Coast Guard's Deepwater program (ships were built and then scrapped), Boeing's border protection fence, which we've skewered numerous times (over budget, behind schedule, doesn't work), a program to track visitors entry and exit from the U.S. called US VISIT (behind schedule, not being managed well), and some contracts related to Hurricane Katrina (mismanaged, wasted funds).

You can watch the hearing, scheduled for this afternoon at 2:00 pm (EST), on the web by following the link at the bottom of the committee web page.

I should also mention that the full committee hearing held last week on the virtual border fence contract in the House Homeland Security Committee will be finished tomorrow at 10:00 am (EST).