The Federal Air Marshall Service, which was transferred
in 2003 from the Transportation Security Administration
to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
and then back to TSA this year, stands to benefit from
improved planning and controls, the Government
Accountability Office has said.
It said the Department of Homeland Security made limited
progress with its transfer of the air marshal service to
ICE in developing a surge capacity through cross-training
ICE agents — suspended in October 2004 due to congressional
doubts that the practice was efficient — and enhancing
federal air marshal’s career opportunities.
The department said it would continue the surge effort,
but has not determined whether and when it would resume
cross-training — and although DHS recognized that career
opportunities for air marshals are limited, it has not
developed plans to expand opportunities through
investigative or other duties, according to GAO-06-203.
It said the department had not determined how the
transition objectives would be met because it did not
develop an overall strategy with implementation goals,
measures, and a key timeline to target performance
shortfalls and correct them.
Nor did DHS develop a communication strategy to create
shared expectations and report related progress on the
transition to employees and other stakeholders, the
report said.
It said with the return of FAMS to TSA, the department
needs to improve management controls to help ensure
that mission related incidents that affect air
marshals’ ability to operate discretely are tracked
and addressed, for example, by developing a policy
stating when and how incident reports are to be filed.
Further, FAMS is unable to guarantee that the outcomes
of reported actions are communicated back to the air
marshals that originally reported them — so that they
see the reports have meaning and use and would file others.
FAMS, however, said it planned to develop such policies.
