The Transportation Security Administration lacks “consistent
performance standards” for evaluating private screener performance,
or comparing it to the performance of federal screeners, a new
report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector
General has said.
It faulted the lack of a central point of authority for making policy
decisions and providing guidance to the local TSA officials charged
with managing and overseeing its screener pilot programs, and
alleged that requests from the local officials are often passed around
within headquarters rather than being dealt with.
As a result, “the four pilot program contractors interpreted program
guidelines differently or received different guidance from TSA on
similar issues, leading to inconsistencies in operations among the
pilot program contractors and making comparisons among them
difficult,” according to the report.
It said TSA relies on airport FSD to monitor the programs and report
on “unusual contractor practices,” and that headquarters is more
focused on developing policy on hiring and training — and that such a
management structure fails to acknowledge operational differences
occurring within the pilot program airports, said the report.
While some TSA airport officials did not bother contacting
headquarters to make decisions, others expressed frustration at the
lack of response from headquarters or inaccurate guidance, said the IG.
However, one unnamed TSA official said the lack of response was
partly due to high turnover in the contracting officer and program
manager positions, and noted that those “positions have stabilized
and recent improvements have been made to the program to improve
efficiency and oversight.”
The IG also found that TSA failed to establish contract performance
evaluation plans — as required under the contracts — 10 days prior to
the start of the first evaluation period.
According to the report, the plans were supposed to have included
criteria to evaluate performance areas and identify the percentage of
award fees for them. However, it said TSA evaluated contract
performance using the objectives within each contract’s work
statement, which were based on contractor proposals — only one of
which had “measurable performance criteria.”
