On November 16 of last year, the U.S. House of Representatives issued a Joint Majority Staff Report on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The report is titled, A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform. In my opinion it was a scathing commentary on TSA, and it illuminates several critical flaws that need immediate attention. Among other things, a few of the key findings were:
TSA lacks administrative competency and is made inefficient by its massive bureaucracy;
TSA's leadership structure is flawed;
TSA is failing to carry out agency operations;
TSA is failing to develop and deploy effective technology.
One of the most shocking and paralyzing facts in the report indicates that the TSA is now larger than the Departments of Labor, Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and State combined. Absolutely incredible! They employ more than 65,000 people. The report went onto say that TSA's primary mission of transportation security has been neglected because of the constant focus on managing its enormous and unwieldy bureaucracy. In the last 10 years the TSA has spent a staggering $57 billion dollars to "secure the transportation network." That makes the paltry sum of $4 billion spent on U.S. Customs & Border Protection's (CBP's) Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system seem like a real bargain.
As TSA was being stood up, their leadership made a power play for imposing control over maritime and land border cargo. The TSA claimed that they owned those modalities for inbound and outbound cargo. I know because I was in some of those meetings as we were in the midst of designing the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) Program with CBP. Thankfully, under the guidance of then Commissioner Robert Bonner and with wide support from the trade community, CBP successfully fended off their aggressive tactics.
The TSA was successful, however, in getting control over air cargo including international consignments. And so as not to blemish their perfect record, and just as you would expect, they have failed miserably in this realm as well. Last October the TSA finally admitted that they would not be able to meet a December 2011 deadline for 100% screening of all inbound air cargo on commercial aircraft. They cited the unique challenges of the industry and offered no estimate of when they might be able to meet this standard.
In my humble opinion, no one knows cargo better than CBP. They have more than 200 years of experience in examining and handling it, and by most accounts they do a darned good job. Perhaps the TSA should consider hiring CBP to consult with them on how to effectively and efficiently run the air cargo operations.
In recent years I’ve been quoted a number of times as saying: “Of the 40-plus federal agencies that regulate international trade, CBP should be given the equivalent of the Malcolm Baldrige Award for being accessible and for logically deploying new programs efficiently and effectively.” This notion is especially true when you compare CBP to agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and certainly the TSA.
Needless to say, without espousing or imposing my political views on the readership, it bothers me immensely as a professional and, more importantly, as a tax-paying citizen to witness this kind of inept management and reckless waste. The federal government has repeatedly demonstrated that they are not good at running or effectually managing processes or operations. The U.S. Postal Service and Social Security Administration serve as prime examples. Now, here comes TSA to trump them all, and they have accomplished this feat in only 10 short years.
The key question at the end of the day, of course, is what's being done to correct this situation? Given their abysmal record, it sounds like a good house cleaning is in order. Will it happen? Based on my experiences in Washington, I'd say that it's not likely; after all it is the government where non-appointees are virtually guaranteed a lifetime of work. So the problems will perpetuate themselves and the agency will be the subject of another searing report in a few years and perhaps under a new Administration. As a result of the House of Representatives' report, a total of 11 recommendations were made, but frankly speaking, they fall far short of addressing the real issues at TSA with the substantive hard-hitting mandates that the agency needs to truly address some of the issues outlined in the narrative.
( linda )01 Feb,2012
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