[June 03, 2015] Last year I was speaking with a U.S. military Flag officer about his experiences traveling through so many airports. He told me his biggest issue was his artificial metal hip. It always got him extra screening despite having proper documentation, frequent flyer status, and identifiable as a U.S. Army general. Would it be too difficult to tag him as trustworthy enough to travel through the regular screening process? Apparently not. While this is clearly a management issue, it is reflective of the TSA leadership problem that is similar to all government agencies.
News reports from yesterday tell us that an internal Red Team at TSA discovered that screeners failed to detect fake explosives and weapons 95 percent of the time.1 For information on how Red Teams work and how they can improve leadership, see link here. In the wake of this discovery, the Homeland Security chief reassigned the acting TSA administrator and made public a number of ways he plans to improve security.2 These are good changes and are to be applauded, but they will only affect TSA performance at the margins because they fail to address the agency’s biggest problem.
The Transportation Security Administration has the same problem that was exposed last year in the U.S. Veterans Administration (see link here). The problem? Employees know they work for “the government” and know their employment is guaranteed for life; with a few rare exceptions. They also know that the people who they provide services to are not who they work for. Thus, they have little incentive to provide good customer service beyond any internal motivation most of them may bring to the workplace.
“The VA’s problem is that relying on them to carry the workload of those who have no personal motivation or passion to do the right thing, is a big problem. Once hired in a government job, we all know that it is nearly impossible to get fired.” – theLeaderMaker.com
Screening at airports across the United States will see a temporary and minor uptick in improved security because they are currently under the management microscope. When the eyes of our political leaders move on elsewhere, the TSA will again return to those same practices that were exposed to us yesterday. None of this should be a surprise. For those of us who have spent many years working with civilians in government agencies, it is rare to find lower level workers who are motivated, hard working, and perform their job with care.
Does the TSA leadership have a problem?3 Yes they do. What is so unfortunate for our senior leaders is that they know that the problem is the system of employment for government workers. They will neither admit it publically nor do they have the moral courage to do anything to fix it. If they were to attempt to address the problem, they will be immediately attacked as racists, sexists, and bigots.
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[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/02/us-usa-security-tsa-idUSKBN0OI05D20150602 What is interesting about this report is that it’s an internal report of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General and was leaked to the public to expose the secret nature of TSA.
[3] Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said yesterday that “Today, all air travelers are subject to a robust security system [emphasis mine] that employs multiple layers of protection …” Anyone familiar with the situation knows this to be a fabrication and shows how government employee leaders are lose with the truth.