The DHS National Bio-surveillance Integration Center does not receive the kind of data it has identified as most critical for supporting its early detection mission, particularly data generated at the earliest stages of an event, GAO has said.
It said the NBSIC has made efforts to acquire data from a community of federal partners, obtain analytical expertise from other agencies, establish governance bodies to develop and oversee the community of federal partners, and provide IT to support data collection, analysis, and communication.
However, the NBIC has faced challenges leveraging the expertise of its federal partners, according to GAO-10-171.
It said officials at the center have emphasized the importance of agencies temporarily assigning personnel to supplement the expertise at NBIC but that just two of 11 partner agencies have assigned personnel to support the integration center.
While the integration center has developed an IT system, it is primarily used to help identify and collect publicly available Internet data because NBIC lacks data from federal partners that best support the early detection goal of bio-surveillance, the report said.
It said the NBIC is not fully equipped to carry out its mission because it lacks key resources including data and personnel from its partner agencies.
