As much as travelers complain about Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and airport inspections, there is a more dire problem — TSA executives are resigning from the agency in higher numbers than other agencies. This is setting off alarms in Washington.
A recent GAO report indicated higher than average attrition rates at TSA. Worse, they are leaving because they are dissatisfied with priorities and decisions of leaders.
… from fiscal 2005 to fiscal 2008, the rate of executives resigning, rather than retiring or transferring to other departments, was high, GAO said. In fiscal 2005, 20 of the 32 executives who left the agency, or 63 percent, quit; in fiscal 2008, that rate had fallen to four of 15 departures, or 27 percent. Of the 46 former TSA senior executives whom GAO interviewed, 14 said they left the agency because they were dissatisfied with the management style of top leaders, and 12 reported that they were dissatisfied with the priorities and decisions of those leaders.
Of course, TSA claims that these executive departures have no effect on their mission, however, anytime an organization faces high attrition rates, especially in a period of economic stress, it signals problems in the department.
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This really is no news at all. Everyone knows that the TSA is a severely troubled agency. It is clear and obvious to anyone who flies that the visible parts of the TSA are a chaotic morass characterized by a deadly mixture of arrogance, incompetence, inconsistency, secrecy, and utter contempt for the traveling public. That can only reflect an even more chaotic mess that’s invisible to the public, behind the locked doors where the (classified) decisions are made. That executives are resigning in frustration is indeed alarming, but not surprising. They’re just voting with their feet, which is effectively the only thing any of us can do about our dissatisfaction with the questionable hassles of “airport security.”
I had briefly hoped that the change in administration would lead to a re-evaluation of the TSA. The Bush administration gave it unlimited authority to do whatever it wanted, under a general approach of allowing agencies involved in the Global War On Terror to operate under a shroud of secrecy without oversight or accountability to anyone. That’s practically a guarantee of incompetence, abuse, and waste, which is just what we’re seeing with the TSA. (The TSA perhaps gives us unique visibility into the Homeland Security bureaucracy, since they unavoidably have to expose part of their operation to many members of the public. It’s not reassuring.)
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any sign of re-evaluation or improvement with the new administration. That’s most likely because the administration has to deal with many intractable problems that understandably have a higher priority. But I’m afraid it may also be the successful efforts of the unaccountable TSA leadership to avoid oversight or interference by playing the fear card. No politician or bureaucrat wants to be responsible for “weakening” the TSA by introducing oversight or by reforming some of the more obviously stupid things the TSA does. So they just back off and write the TSA a new blank check.
TSA is indeed a troubled agency. The Obama Administration has failed to appoint a successor to TSA Administrator Kip Hawley in a timely manner, and Acting Administrator Gale Rossides has provided zero leadership. TSA is a power-tripping abusive government behemoth that levies one unfunded mandate after another upon the US airlines, hires hordes of agents to snoop around the airport who have no idea of what they’re doing – most of these agents are locally hired as a means of appeasing the morale of the screeners, so many of these agents don’t know the operating environment and are FAR from experts in their fields, because before they were screeners many of them were super-sizing at your local fast food drive-through. TSA has zero credibility with the traveling public, congress, and the airline industry. Most of these seeds of abuse and overall failure were sewn by the Bush Administration when it granted TSA “excepted service” status. As such, TSA is exempt from many rules of employee treatment. However, many TSA managers and leaders use this as a blank check to make arbitrary and unilateral decisions leaving us with a confounding experience when we fly, and having to deal with nasty, bitter employees. TSA is an absolute abject failure in how to stand up a government agency, and until these roots are addressed, the ship will continue to list.
I am not surprised to see this. I was in Houston for an airline-related training class several months ago, and my leg was in a walking cast. I had to allow an extra half hour every day to clear TSA in order to get to my classroom, which was on the other side of Security. The class was 10 days long and none of the ten inspections I went through had any resemblance to any of the others. I believe the agents were selecting methods at random, using the Dart-Board theory. Another encounter I had with TSA two years ago found me actually applying for a job with the agency. I speak a major Middle Eastern language and am working on a second one, and also have native fluency in Spanish. You would think that someone like me would be taken by these folks. But nope … because I had a bad credit score, I was immediately rejected. Anyway, we can rest assured that all these TSA agents who pick inspection methods at random at least have good credit! I am so relieved! (Expletive Deleted)
Visit http://www.prisonexp.org/
to see the results of poorly trained security guards in a famous Psychology experiment–not much has changed…
Here Lies The NSA
Blown Away
RIP
Nobody Was Faster