The nation’s first Secretary of Homeland Security says the border can be secured using commercially available technologies, and that the Department of Homeland Security’s failed multibillion-dollar contract with Boeing Co. to build an electronic border fence ran counter to the legislation that created the DHS in the first place.

Tom Ridge, who served in that role under President George W. Bush, recently praised the Department of Homeland Security for putting an end in January to Boeing Co.’s multibillion-dollar contract for the Secure Border Initiative (SBInet). After nearly five years and $1 billion in taxpayer funding, the deal netted a mere 28-mile prototype and a 53-mile permanent segment of electronic sensors in Arizona. According to Ridge, the effort failed in large part because it did not leverage commercially available technology.

“In the enabling legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security, Congress encouraged the department to use commercial off-the-shelf technology,” said Ridge. But with SBInet, the DHS “supported a new system…on the taxpayers’ dollars,” he said. “Somebody sold them a bill of goods. Congress funded it…and failed in oversight,” said Ridge. “Boeing does great work. They didn’t do great work at the border.”

Ridge said he was genuinely surprised by Congress’ proposed 81 percent funding cuts to the DHS research and development budget, during an interview with Breaking Gov. He also expressed “outrage” over Congress’s failure to address the communication needs of first responders. But he believes new efficiencies make it possible to use commercial off-the-shelf technologies that would significantly enhance security along the southern border with Mexico and save taxpayers potentially billions of dollars.

“Today, I believe that I could pull together a system of engineers and security personnel from Customs and Border Protection, and some people from the military, and we could…re-engineer the process, build it quicker, a heck of a lot cheaper and substantially reduce the risk,” said Ridge.

Ridge now leads Washington, D.C.-based security consulting firm Ridge Global, which provides a wide range of security advice to government and industry clients around the world. But the former Homeland Security secretary has also been a central supporter during the last three years of small business and innovation contests designed to identify cutting-edge technologies and get them to market faster. He also was recently appointed to lead the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Security Task Force. It has been this private-sector work that, ironically, has given Ridge greater insight into commercially available technology for homeland security.

“If you’re willing to accept the fact that no matter what kind of system you put up there it’s not going to be fail-safe, then why don’t you get some people who understand systems and take what we know has worked… build a strategy and tactical platform around it, [and] put it in?” With that approach, said Ridge, “you embed it quicker and it’s billions of dollars cheaper.”

For Ridge, one tried and true system that should be used more aggressively along the border is unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.

“We know UAVs are working pretty well in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we know surveillance [systems] work and sensors work,” he said. Putting the right commercial technologies in place to support a ramped-up UAV effort, along with additional surveillance and sensor systems, would enable DHS to, in Ridge’s words, “triangulate and integrate” real-time data about illegal border crossings and threats.

“But if Congress wants to spend billions of dollars more on some elaborate new technology, never tested before and when is finally constructed and tested failed miserably” then, said Ridge, they will have to accept the responsibility for allowing taxpayer funds to be used in such a fashion, as happened in the SBInet contract awarded to Boeing.

But nothing is without risk, acknowledged Ridge. If Congress encourages the secretary and the DHS to use off-the-shelf technology as they did in the enabling legislation that created the DHS, then “they have to accept that there will be a little risk,” said Ridge. “We have to accept it. It’s all about managing the risk. Even in tight budget times, there are ways you can enhance security” with commercial technology.