As the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its division, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), sustains yet another round of criticism from federal investigators, there also are signs that TSA in particular is getting some things right recently -- at least in the eyes of aviation security experts and its own staff.
The criticism again comes from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and is about TSA's Screening Partnership Program, otherwise known as "Opt Out." The program, through which airports can choose to have their screening operations managed by a private contractor but supervised by TSA, remains stuck at only six voluntary airport participants. GAO concludes that DHS still isn't doing all it can to alleviate airports' concerns with liability.
On the plus side, TSA also is developing or expanding several new initiatives that follow principles supported by many aviation security experts. These entail the local hiring of airport screeners instead of centralized hiring, making screening procedures less predictable and thus more terrorist- proof, and using behavior analysis to do a more sophisticated kind of threat assessment.
GAO describes a chain of factors that appears to be holding up Opt Out. First, private security firms must get a designation from DHS as qualified security providers. The benefit of designation is that the firms' liability can't exceed their insurance coverage.
Next, DHS must determine that the firm performs acceptably in order to then fully certify a qualified vendor. Certification makes the firm more of an official government contractor and thus, virtually immune from all legal claims. Acceptable performance for certification is to be determined through a set of performance measures in 14 areas, which TSA has drafted. But DHS has neither approved those measures nor set a time line for doing so. GAO says DHS should do both.
In response, DHS simply says that it concurs, and doesn't offer a new time line.
Meanwhile, early last month, TSA head Kip Hawley testified before the Senate Transportation Committee that the agency is ramping up its local hiring initiative. Essentially, this focuses all hiring activities in the offices of the local federal security directors (FSDs).
In late February, local hiring had brought on 200 new people nationally as "Transportation Security Officials" (TSOs), the official agency name for screeners. A short time later in early March, 300 new TSOs started work. By late March, another 380 were brought on board, an agency spokeswoman tells Air Safety Week.
Under the old approach, hiring was accomplished by roving teams of human resource personnel, she adds. Final hiring decisions took weeks to finalize, during which time many applicants found other jobs. Under the new initiative, applicants can come in and leave the same day with a conditional job offer, pending some additional checking, says Paul Malandrino, FSO for Thurgood Marshall Baltimore-Washington Int'l Airport (BWI).
Moreover, "we can now 'touch' the candidates early in the process and guide them through," Malandrino tells Air Safety Week. So uniformed TSOs answer questions at all recruitment events, and serious job candidates are given contact information.
Despite increasing fears that there won't be enough TSOs to handle the summer crunch, TSA believes local hiring infuses some much-needed flexibility and efficiency into operations, and will better equip FSDs to fully staff checkpoints at peak travel times.
Since BWI's local hiring began in February, Malandrino has hired 900 new workers, all of them on a part-time basis. At BWI, the goal is to have 20 percent of the workforce as part timers, which is the optimal proportion according to TSA industrial engineers.
TSA has less information to share about its other new initiatives. At the hearing, Hawley said the pilot effort to make the screening process less predictable will soon be expanded to more airports, while not offering any agency plans to possibly expand a second pilot having TSOs evaluate people using behavior analysis.
Another interesting point GAO makes -- not part of a recommendation, however -- is that TSA could shift more of the cost risk for Opt Out to the private security contractors if the agency were to change its mostly cost reimbursement-based contracts to fixed-price contracts. TSA says it's in the process of establishing new fixed-price contracts at three of the four smallest current Opt Out airports. But it has to wait another one to two years before doing this at larger airports, where it's still figuring out what the total screening costs are.
GAO's report is called "Aviation Security: Progress Made to Set up Program Using Private-Sector Airport Screeners, But More Work Remains," GAO-06- 166.
>>Contacts: Paul Malandrino, BWI FSD, (410) 694-6274; Cathleen Berrick, GAO, (202) 512-3404<<
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