Develop a case analysis on this topic: Evaluate the pros and cons of the followi
ID: 449772 • Letter: D
Question
Develop a case analysis on this topic: Evaluate the pros and cons of the following: Remaining with a government-operated system of administering airport security, versus returning to privately owned and operated, contracted airport security organizations. In your evaluation, consider factors that resulted in the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. Include in your discussion San Francisco International Airport’s ability to remain secure while utilizing a private company under contract with the federal government.APA style. 1-3 pages. With reference. Develop a case analysis on this topic: Evaluate the pros and cons of the following: Remaining with a government-operated system of administering airport security, versus returning to privately owned and operated, contracted airport security organizations. In your evaluation, consider factors that resulted in the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. Include in your discussion San Francisco International Airport’s ability to remain secure while utilizing a private company under contract with the federal government.
APA style. 1-3 pages. With reference. Develop a case analysis on this topic: Evaluate the pros and cons of the following: Remaining with a government-operated system of administering airport security, versus returning to privately owned and operated, contracted airport security organizations. In your evaluation, consider factors that resulted in the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. Include in your discussion San Francisco International Airport’s ability to remain secure while utilizing a private company under contract with the federal government.
APA style. 1-3 pages. With reference.
Explanation / Answer
TSA's main activity is in service security screening at more than 450 profitable airports across the nation. The organization also runs the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), analyzes cleverness data, and oversees the safety of rail, transit, highways, and pipelines. TSA has 62,000 employees and an yearly budget in 2013 of $7.9 billion.
After more than a decade of knowledge, it is clear that the formation of TSA and the federal takeover of airport show was a mistake. Auditors have found that TSA's show performance has been no better, and perhaps worse, than private screening. And TSA has turn out to be known for mismanagement, doubtful investments, and safety failures. Former TSA chief Kip Hawley renowned last year that the agency is "hopelessly bureaucratic." And new congressional reports have blasted TSA for "costly, counterintuitive, and badly executed" plans and for having an "enormous, rigid and distracted bureaucracy."
We would be better off without a colossal federal agency that wheel all major aspects of aviation security. The majority airports in Europe and Canada use private companies for their traveler and luggage screening. That practice creates a more well-organized and innovative security arrangement, and it allows governments to centre on gathering intelligence and conducting analysis rather than on trying to manage a large workforce.
Introduction
After the terrorist attacks in 2001, Congress and the George W. Bush administration enthused quickly to increase government spending on aviation safety and to take control of previously private airport screening. Without any full analysis of the pros and cons of a government conquest, the Senate voted generally to federalize airport security just one month after 9/11. The House passed a more cautious bill, but it mainly acceded to the Senate version when negotiating the final bill. In November 2001, the Aviation and Transportation Security Act created TSA within the Department of Transportation.
In 2002, the Department of Homeland Security Act created DHS, which included TSA and portions of 21 other federal agencies. TSA is a major fraction of DHS, having a personnel of about 62,000 people. TSA became a large association very quickly after 2001, when it restore 16,500 private airport screeners with more than 40,000 federal screeners.
TSA's main center is aviation security, but the organization also oversees the safety of rail, transit, highways, and pipelines. Before 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was accountable for the safety of civil aviation, and it oversee passenger and baggage screening carry out by private companies on behalf of the airlines. The creation of TSA nationalized show at commercial airports. Today, there are concerning 53,000 federal airport screeners, who explanation for 85 percent of TSA's overall workforce.
Mismanagement and Bureaucracy
TSA has had workforce organization problems since its beginning. The agency predictable that the hiring and preparation of its initial labor force in 2002 would cost $104 million, but persons costs ended up soaring to $741 million. A huge quantity of money, for example, was exhausted on renting expensive hotel space through the hiring process.
Management problems stem from TSA's large showing workforce distract the organization from its core everyday jobs in aviation security. A House account argued that "due to high attrition, TSA has spent so much occasion managing itself that it has been not capable to focus necessary resources on oversight and directive of U.S. transportation security in universal." Another House report explain the agency as "an enormous, inflexible and unfocused bureaucracy," that has "lost its focus on transport security."
Collective bargaining means monopoly union control over a workplace. Monopoly unions tend to reduce workplace efficiency by protecting poorly performing workers and pushing for larger staffing levels than required. They tend to resist the introduction of labor-saving technologies and create a more rule-laden workforce. TSA managers, for example, have to negotiate with union representatives regarding the reassignment of employees, which is problematic for an industry as dynamic as aviation. Air carrier schedules and route volumes often change, which creates fluctuating demand for airport screeners.
Expensive Failures
Security experts have disapprove of DHS and TSA for not allocating their capital based on cost-benefit analysis and full risk assessments. Former RAND business president, James Thomson, noted in 2007 that "DHS equipment most of its programs with little or no assessment of their performance." A National school of Sciences report in 2010 likewise criticized DHS for its lack of full risk analyses supporting its decision making.
Airport Screening and Civil Liberties
Aviation screening is an important element of aviation security, but that does not mean that all TSA actions are appropriate.93 Some TSA practices push the legal boundaries of permissible searches and seizures. Another issue is whether the TSA is using its screening activities to discover evidence of crimes that are beyond the scope of its proper role in aviation security.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars unreasonable searches and seizures. With airport searches, individuals do have a reduced expectation of privacy, and federal courts have held that warrantless searches of all passengers prior to boarding are permissible.94 But some of TSA's current practices, such as full body pat-downs and the use of Advanced Imaging Technology machines, may be over the legal line.
Another civil liberties anxiety is that the TSA from time to time acts as if it had broad police authority outside of its transportation security role. For instance, recent sweeps by team of TSA agents at rail and transportation stations have resulted in arrests for slight offenses such as drug possession, and this activity appear to simply duplicate local police purpose.
When Americans journey by air, they do not surrender all their privacy, and container law bars TSA airport screeners from looking for proof of crimes beyond plots next to aviation security. Yet TSA seems to have urbanized mission creep at airport checkpoints.
Privatizing Airport Screening
TSA has demonstrated many of the failings typical of large, monopoly federal bureaucracies. It has a "government knows best" mentality, and it imposes one-size-fits-all solutions on the whole country. When TSA makes mistakes, it imposes them on the entire aviation system. The SPOT program is an example. TSA installed SPOT across the nation without first studying, in detail, whether or not it worked and was cost effective.
TSA dominates most aspects of aviation security, handling both airport screening operations and regulatory oversight of screening operations. Aviation reform expert Robert Poole notes that those responsibilities create a conflict of interest:
On the one hand, TSA is designated as the organization that establishes transportation security rule and regulates those that give transportation operations and communications. But on the other hand, TSA itself is the worker of the largest component of airport security-passenger and luggage screening. When it approach to screening, therefore, TSA has a grave conflict of interest . Arm's-length regulation is a basic good- government code ; self-regulation is intrinsically problematic.
How well would private show work? Luckily, the TSA control has not been absolute, and we have some ongoing knowledge with private screening. The 2001 legislation that shaped TSA established the SPP, which has allowable some airports to opt out of TSA screening and use private firms. The firms agreement with TSA and are under federal narrow control. Originally, there were five airports in the agenda, with San Francisco being the largest. All five contain had good results with private screening and contain stuck with it. The number of SPP airports has developed to 16 today.
The expansion of private screening is a danger to the TSA bureaucracy. So it is not astonishing that TSA has "a history of threatening airport operators that express an attention in participating" in the SPP program. In 2011, TSA discarded applications from six airports to join the SPP program, and it emerge that the agency wanted to wind down the agenda altogether. But that TSA posture flew in the face of congressional intention In response, Congress rebuked the agency and pushed from side to side legislation in 2012 that make stronger the rights of airports wanting to use private screeners. Other airports are now present applications to TSA for SPP status.
The existence of the SPP program has allowed researchers to compare the performance of TSA screeners to private screeners for such skills as spotting guns in X-ray machines. A 2004 study by the DHS Inspector General found that federal and private screeners performed equally poorly. The same year, a study by a ask firm for TSA found that the U.S. airports with private screeners performed as good or better on screening as airports with TSA screeners. In 2005, the GAO found that private screeners did a improved work than TSA screeners. Also in 2005, The DHS examiner General finished: "The ability of TSA screeners to stop prohibited items from being carried from side to side the sterile regions of the airports charge no better than the presentation of screeners prior to September 11, 2001."
A 2007 study by a consult firm for TSA found that "private screeners performed at a level that was equal to or greater than that of central [screeners]." A 2007 USA Today investigation found that the private screeners at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) had far better discovery abilities than the federal screeners at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).A 2008 TSA report compared screening at six SPP airports to show at six non-SPP airports and found performance to be similar.
A 2012 study by the GAO compared all 16 SPP airports with non-SPP airports on four different performance measures. It found that some SPP airports performed slightly better than non-SPP airports on some measures, and performed slightly worse on other measures. The bottom line is that after a decade of experience, it appears that the overall performance of privatized screening is at least as good as, if not better than, government screening.
There are other advantages to private screening, as reported by the GAO in a 2012 survey of 34 airport operators regarding the SPP program. One advantage is the opportunity to improve customer service, which is important to airports in order to stay competitive with other modes of travel. Another advantage of private screening is increased staffing flexibility. Under the current TSA system, airports need to get approval from Washington to adjust the number of screeners as demands fluctuate, and those approvals have often taken extended periods of time. The number of passengers at particular airports can be subject to substantial fluctuations; thus, local control over workforce decisions makes more sense than the current centralized system.
TSA had argued that private screeners are more expensive than federal screeners, but the GAO found that claim to be incorrect. Indeed, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure released a report in 2011, which found that expanding the SPP program would generate savings. It found that the private screeners at the San Francisco airport (SFO) were 65 percent more efficient than the federal screeners at the Los Angeles airport (LAX). SFO screening operations also had lower employee attrition rates than LAX, leading to reduced costs from recruitment and training. Federal rules require that private screeners be trained to the same standards as federal screeners, but even with that restriction SFO was able to achieve those standards at lower training costs than TSA screeners.
Under the SPP program, private screeners must follow rules similar to those of government screeners. TSA picks the screening contractors, pays the contractors, and imposes TSA screening protocols. But that structure reduces the possible cost savings and performance improvements that the private sector could bring. Poole notes that TSA "micromanages" screening under the SPP, "spell[ing] out procedures and technology (inputs) rather than only specifying the desired outcomes of screening, thereby making it very difficult for screening companies to innovate."
Reforms should allow airports to hire screening companies of their choosing and pay for those services with charges on airport users. If a security company did not achieve the high-quality screening results for which it was contracted, then it could be fired. One of the problems with the near-monopoly TSA is that individual airports have not been allowed to "fire" the screener because it is the federal government. The SPP program has started to change that, but much larger reforms are needed.
Poole argues that moving the responsibility for screening from TSA to the airports would allow airports to create a more integrated and effective security system because airports are already responsible for general airport security. Such integration would allow the staff to be cross-trained among security functions at airports, for example, which would improve morale and enhance skills.
Some policymakers favor expanding private screening to all commercial airports and shrinking TSA's role in aviation security to include only analyzing intelligence, setting security standards, and auditing screening operations.
Many other countries have privatized their airport security screening. More than 80 percent of Europe's commercial airports use private screening companies, including those in Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. The other airports in Europe use their own in-house security, but no major country in Europe uses the national government's aviation bureaucracy for screening. Europe's airports moved to private contracting during the 1980s and 1990s after numerous hijackings and terrorist threats, and it has worked very well.
Canada also uses private screening companies at its commercial airports, and some airports also use private firms for general airport security. After 9/11, the government created the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, which oversees screening at the country's 89 commercial airports. But the screening itself is carried out by three expert private firms—G4S, Garda, and Securitas—which are each responsible for a group of particular Canadian airports.
Aviation security firms have developed a great deal of expertise over the decades. They have responded to the demands of their clients, and they apply the best practices they have learned across the airports they serve. Private businesses make mistakes, but unlike government bureaucracies they are more likely to improve their performance over time, particularly in a competitive contracting environment.
Many countries have embraced privatization not only for airport security, but also for other parts of their aviation systems. Dozens of countries have privatized major airports, and some have privatized their air traffic control (ATC) systems. Canada, for example, privatized its ATC in 1996, setting the system up as a nonprofit corporation, Nav Canada. That reform has been a big success, with Nav Canada running one of the safest ATC systems in the world and winning awards for its top performance. Canada also privatized its 26 largest airports in the 1990s.
In many ways, the United States has become a laggard in commercial aviation. Numerous other nations have privatized their airports, ATC, and aspects of their aviation security. U.S. policymakers should study those reforms and pursue such innovations here. Privatization offers a viable alternative to America's often mismanaged and inefficient government aviation infrastructure.
With regard to aviation security, the federal government has an important role to play. But its near-monopoly over airport screening has resulted in it getting "bogged down in managing its bloated federal workforce," as one congressional report concluded. Operating the vast passenger and baggage screening system takes the government's focus away from proper federal activities such as terrorism intelligence and analysis.
The way ahead is for Congress to abolish TSA. Programs that have not shown substantial benefits—such as SPOT and FAMS—should be downsized or eliminated. Passenger and baggage screening—which represents about two-thirds of TSA's budget—should be devolved to airports and opened to competitive bidding by private firms. And the remaining parts of TSA—such as intelligence activities—should be moved to other federal agencies. Over time, these reforms would reduce taxpayer costs, while improving the quality of the U.S. aviation security system.
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