I shall begin today’s missive by pledging not to speak of the recent elections, or allude to the outcome in any way whatsoever. You’re welcome.

Instead, we’ll review some of the treasure trove of information surrounding the status and future prospects for maintaining a strong national aviation security infrastructure. One of the most visible and increasingly important issues is that of cybersecurity, currently under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate. DHS has had a plan stalled before Congress for several months to reorganize its role as an operational component of DHS, renaming it the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency. There was little information offered on how yet another reshuffling of deck chairs, a brand-new name, and the cost of new letterheads and business cards for everybody will enhance our future safety and security. If anybody notices the difference, please let me know.

Then there’s a new DHS Inspector General report OIG-17-05 which details the problem of delays in staffing up our security infrastructure in such agencies as Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the US Secret Service among others. According to the OIG, the shortfalls “…affect workforce productivity and morale, and potentially disrupt mission critical operations”, with delays currently anywhere from seven months to a full year in hiring - and the report says that’s a slight improvement from before. ICE now has the shortest time to hire, 212 days, but the Secret Service actually got worse: a 39% increase from 272 days to hire rose to 359 days in one year.

A department spokesman said “DHS has been undertaking an initiative to streamline and improve hiring processes, including… automating the process where appropriate.” And yet, while CBP has just one system that tracks applicants, ICE uses six systems requiring multiple manual data entry and USSS has two manual entry systems that don’t communicate with each other; both anomalies contributed to DHS mis-reporting the statistical information to Congress and the Office of Personnel Management. So if you are thinking about going to work for DHS, you might start with a part-time job to tide you over.

And speaking of possible employment shakeups, we learn from a recent McClatchy news service report which delved into many aspects of TSA provided aviation security since 9/11, there have been far more Air Marshals arrested than they themselves arrest. Air Marshals were arrested 148 times from 2002 through 2012 for various crimes unrelated to their work. This was compared to a Congressional finding by Rep. John Duncan that the marshals made an average of 4.2 arrests per year between 2001 – 2010. As he noted, that works out to about $200 million per arrest - not including local law enforcement costs for their own arrests. I, for one, feel much safer now.