Reflections on the Transportation Security Administration

Among the most visible effects of the new realities we’re learning to live with in the post-9/11 world is the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). A popular pastime in certain toplofty circles is to criticize the TSA as some amalgam of ineffectiveness, incompetence and irrelevancy.

As with most federal agencies, the TSA is none of these, but neither is it perfect. A bit of rational perspective may help to put the TSA’s role into perspective and provide some guidance for travel professionals as they explain that role to their customers.

The TSA was created as a direct result of what is unambiguously an act of war. Memories in many quarters have been dulled by the passage of time, or perhaps by self-interest, but one fact should remain clear: those persons whose actions motivated the creation of the TSA will kill us if they can, and the nation’s transportation system is central to their planning.

For months government officials, beginning with the President, have made it clear that heightened national security measures are unavoidable, that the public should prepare for further terrorist outrages, and that the conflict into which the country has been drawn will be a long one. It’s at least passing strange that observers, who somehow believe they have a superior window into the national and world scene, find it productive to maintain that a new approach to transportation security isn’t needed.

Remember that the TSA has a much larger responsibility that simply airline security, baggage screening, or airport passenger checks. The TSA is involved in most aspects of airport security the public never sees, together with similar security at seaports and throughout the trucking industry.

Many of these activities were addressed poorly, if at all, prior to the creation of the TSA. The agency’s mandate is large, complicated, and difficult. The challenges outside air travel are probably the greatest and the most expensive.

DIDN'T THE NATION'S AIR TRANSPORTATION SECURITY SYSTEM PERFORM AS EXPECTED?

This often-made rationalization for inaction is irrelevant and somewhat akin to the old chestnut about the operation being a success even though the patient died. The airline security system as designed and operated prior to 9/11 is clearly inadequate to our current circumstances.

What’s more, the deficiencies of that system were obvious to everyone who paid even the slightest attention while spending time on airplanes. I’ve frequently said that the traveling public’s attitude toward airline security is curious blend of cynicism and rationalization.

Most everyone knew that the people running the security system were hopelessly incompetent, but rationalized that it wouldn’t make a difference "this time."

It should be a fundamental tenant of enlightened management that the people who made the mess should not be the ones to clean it up. The airline-operated system was striving for the cheapest result it could find and was not up to the task.

AIR TRAVEL CAN'T BE 100% SECURE, SO WHY BOTHER?

People with this view should, if they haven’t by now, focus their attention on some other industry where their opinions will do less damage. The traveling public wants security, not further rationalization and hand-wringing as to why doing nothing is acceptable. The sooner all participants in the air transportation system realize this, the sooner the lingering apprehension travelers have about flying will abate.

Further, travelers will tolerate inconvenience and expense in exchange for security. What they won’t tolerate is pointless inconvenience that obviously won’t do the job. The TSA has far to go in this regard, but suggesting that there is no solution is both wrong and unhelpful.

ISN'T HEIGHTENED SECURITY TOO EXPENSIVE FOR AIRLINES?

Doing nothing or doing the wrong things is too expensive. Heightened security is an inevitable result of the present conflict.

Most travelers believe the airlines can and do pass these "security charges" along to their customers. I’ve personally never seen a legitimate consumer survey that maintained the traveling public would not pay at least something for security—what the public resents is cost without action.

Airlines would do well to understand that the collective American psyche has fundamentally changed since 9/11 and that the full effects of these changes are yet to be understood or appreciated. It's time to start incorporating this new way of thinking into airline business strategies and operating procedures. Failing to do so is dangerous business.

The traveling public may have little patience for an industry that seems to have money for projects, programs, and incentives they regard as frivolous, yet is perceived to lack the time, commitment, patience, or will to address the personal safety issues of paramount concern to everyone--absent a strict Federal requirement to do so.

It’s difficult to maintain that any operation—public or private—is waste-free, but the examples frequently cited as to the TSA’s excesses are senseless.

For instance, there is a published story that among the first acts the TSA performed after its creation was to redecorate its offices. Reporters telling that tale would do well to visit the facilities the TSA shares with other government agencies and see if they can find those mythical furnishings.

Apart from the fact that the numbers suggested won’t buy much office these days, even if it were true one can argue that a major agency of a great nation requires some minimally adequate facility in which to receive the public. In any case the charge is baseless.

Each of the several meetings I’ve personally held with senior TSA officials over the past year has been held in a corner of the cafeteria the agency shares with another agency, as there is no available meeting space and the offices, Spartan by any standard, are too small to accommodate gatherings. I should add that the rest of the cafeteria was filled with other groups holding similar meetings.

Doubtless this will continue to change as the agency is better established, but facilities waste is simply a charge made by people who have nothing legitimate to complain about.

1. Business as usual is simply impractical. The TSA is part of an legitimate and unavoidable response to the ways 9/11 changes the American psyche--many of which we do not fully understand or appreciate yet.
    

2. The TSA, and the legal and organizational structure that surrounds and supports it, is not materially more cumbersome or ill-conceived than for any other agency or similar size and scope.
    

3. TSA spending is extensive, but not inconsistent with its scope or mandate.
    

4. In general, we're better off as travelers and as a nation with the TSA that we would be without it--even with the flawed policy implementations, missteps, and misunderstandings.