According to the recently released report:
"The Homeland Security Department’s $337 million network for sharing top-secret data does not meet the needs of its users, according to an April report by the department’s Acting Inspector General, Richard L. Skinner. Department officials developing the Homeland Secure Data Network hurried to finish the job in nine months because they believed they would be cut off from the Pentagon’s secure data network by a 31 December 2004 deadline. “The methods for collecting and documenting the functional and security needs of users during the requirements definition phase for the new network did not provide adequate assurance that user needs at the 600 sites will be met.” The 600 sites are DHS intelligence-gathering units and federal, state, and local agencies involved in homeland security. The inspector general recommends that all system users be involved in defining its requirements in the future and that completion of all testing be verified before deployment." (Full Report)
We (TRC) wrote a paper articulating an approach for evaluating user requirements in this area back in the year 2000. There have been many advocates of applying the approach utilized for this report , to establish a capability requirements defintion that is driven from the user perspective. Unfortunately, it appears the requirements definition is being left to the contractors building the network and not the actual users.