The Role of Government in Safety Policy for Airports since the Attacks of 9/11 - Term Paper Example

 The Role Of Government In Safety Policy For Airports Since The Attacks Of 9/11 The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 took advantage of the flaws within U.S. Aviation Security and produced catastrophic results. Security issues ascended to utmost importance on the nation’s policy agenda immediately following the attacks. In spite of a general consensus on what role the government plays regarding aviation security and the goals of an aviation security structure, there remains controversy among the public as well as the government on how to regulate and provide this imperative service. All agree that if airline passengers, as well as people in buildings and on the ground are to be protected, terrorists of aviation must be prevented from passing through security checkpoints and gaining access to aircraft. Before September 2001, U.S. General Accounting Office’s (GAO) involvement in aviation security was to oversee the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which had responsibility for aircraft safety, all under the auspices of the Department of Transportation (DOT). Studies conducted by the GAO had consistently demonstrated that there were major weaknesses in aviation security and this had been a problem for a long time. Among the most important aspect of these weaknesses involved airport screening. The industry was not required to screen checked baggage on domestic flights and proved inadequate in the detection of threats when carry-on bags or screening passengers prior to their boarding aircraft. It also provided insufficient security for air traffic control computer systems and inadequate means for restricting access to secure areas at airports and facilities. The Congress and the administration have reorganized the federal agencies responsible for transportation security, transferring them to the new Department of Homeland Security, and the agencies are attempting to enhance security without unduly inhibiting the movement of goods and people. The Transportation Security Administration, which was created in November 2001 and has assumed overall responsibility for transportation security, has made considerable progress in addressing aviation security challenges. Prior to 9/11, airline screeners were hired by the airlines or airports directly. They frequently did not detect terrorist material located either on the passengers or in their carry-on baggage. According to a GAO report in June 2000, a study of screeners conducted in 1987 discovered that airport screeners failed to observe 20 percent of the potentially hazardous items that the FAA used in its tests. Data collected from 1991 through 1999 showed that the problem was worsening (U.S. General Accounting Office, June 2000). Not surprisingly, the FAA characterized this lack of safety implementation as ‘unsatisfactory.’ Through the years, the testing of screeners has become more realistic in that these investigations more closely depict how a terrorist might attempt to circumvent an airport security checkpoint. As the tests become more advanced, the screeners’ level of competence has declined significantly. Two primary sources of this alarming issue regarding screeners’ poor performance were a high turnover rate and inadequate training. The turnover rate at most large U.S. airports exceeds 100 percent a year, primarily caused by the tedious, monotonous work coupled with low pay and the lack of health and other customary benefits. Whether or not the quality of training was sufficient, this amount of turnover leaves few skilled and experienced screeners. In addition to issues of poor screening, the implementation of strategies designed to limit access to protected areas of airports and aircraft seldom performed well and certainly not as intended before the events of September 11. In May 2000, GAO special agents, using false police badges and credentials, gained access to secure areas and were allowed to completely bypass security checkpoints at two major airports (U.S. General Accounting Office, May 2000). The implications of this lack of security should have been enough for the FAA or the federal government to spring into action in order to tighten security. Given this lack of action, the tragic events of 9/11 were inevitable. The undercover GAO agents obtained tickets and boarding passes without benefit of a security check. They could have been carrying weapons and explosives of many descriptions. The DOT (Department of Transportation) had also conducted clandestine airport operations to test security and reported frequent substantial problems regarding the control of access to airports. In one example of its tests, attempts to gain access to secure areas were successful close to seventy percent of the time. Before September 2001, GAO evaluations determined that the FAA had “not ensured the security of the air traffic control computer systems or of the facilities that house them” (U.S. General Accounting Office, May 1998). Since September 2001, federal agencies have become more keenly focused on the challenging effort to strengthen the security of the nation’s airline systems. The vast extent of U.S. airspace alone complicates protection measures and everyone can agree that no type of transportation could be completely free of dangers. Providing security to the airline industry is an immense task that involves hundreds of airports, thousands of airplanes and many thousands of flights daily. Without question, the federal government’s role in airport and airline security has been in a redevelopment phase following September 2001. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created in November 2001 by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act and has taken over the responsibility for aviation security as well as all other forms of transportation in the U.S but is primarily focused on the aviation industry. Subsequent to the September 11th terrorist assaults, DOT was confronted with many pressing aviation security challenges that the GAO and others, including DOT’s Inspector General, had acknowledged such as meeting recently established improved screening technique deadlines and attending to gaps in security. As of November 2001, the TSA has been held accountable for screening passengers and their belongings by order of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. The act required the TSA to employ and install federal passenger screeners by November 19, 2002 and to have mechanisms in place by December 31, 2002 that would have the ability to screen all checked baggage using explosives detection machines. In addition, the FAA enforced the installation of reinforced cockpit doors in commercial aircraft (U.S. General Accounting Office, December 13, 2002). TSA has made significant advancements in attending to the nation’s aviation security problems. As an example, the TSA met its November 2002 hiring deadline by installing more than 40,000 passenger screeners distributed over 429 commercial airports. It had also hired more than 20,000 baggage screeners as of December 2002 and was utilizing explosives detection equipment to test approximately 90 percent of all baggage. In addition, the FAA had approved designs for reinforcing the cockpit doors of nearly 99 percent of the 5,750 commercial aircraft that navigate U.S. skies. As of March of 2003, 80 percent of those new reinforced doors had been installed and the kits were on order for the remaining 20 percent. The TSA had yet to finish the installation of most of the explosives detection equipment needed to meet the act’s baggage-screening requirements by December 2002, however. By the end of 2002, the TSA had in place 239 of the 1,100 explosives detection machines and less than one-third of the 6,000 trace detection machines that it had projected were necessary. Although the TSA has concentrated much of its resources on making certain that explosives and other hazardous objects were not brought aboard airplanes via passengers, weaknesses continued to exist in securing the cargo carried aboard commercial passenger airliners. The Aviation and Transportation Security Act stipulates that all commercial passenger aircraft payload is screened and directs the TSA to have in place as soon as possible, a system which enables the screening, inspection or in some other way ensuring the security of cargo on freight aircraft. The TSA’s main tactic to ensure that air cargo is secure and safe and to come into compliance with the cargo-screening requirement of the act has instituted the ‘known shipper’ program which allows businesses which have established credible histories with air carriers or freight forwarders to ship cargo on planes unchecked. However, the GAO and DOT’s Inspector General have documented weaknesses in the known shipper program as well as in the TSA’s procedures for approving freight forwarders (U.S. General Accounting Office, December 20, 2002). To achieve airline and homeland security, it is imperative to competently control the dangers posed by the threat of terrorism and to direct the country’s resources to the areas of utmost precedence. The GAO advocates utilizing a risk management approach as a guideline for federal security programs to better prepare for and endure terrorization of the airlines. A risk management tact describes a “systematic process to analyze threats, vulnerabilities and the criticality (or relative importance) of assets, to better support key decisions linking resources with prioritized efforts for results” (U.S. General Accounting Office, October 2001). The air transportation industry is a complex and intertwined system so a suitably elevated level of security must be made operational throughout the whole system. Having the flexibility to respond quickly to new information regarding aviation security threats is essential to a successful program of air safety. Furthermore, incentives must be presented to both the supervisory bodies of the industry and to protection suppliers so that aviation security upgrades can be developed and quickly put into practice. However, the costs associated with providing security must be incorporated simultaneously into the decision making process and evaluated against the benefits. Since September 2001, federal, state, and local organizations as well as the private sector have been forced to rethink their roles and responsibilities regarding airline security. One of, if not the main, challenges to achieving national preparedness centers rests on the federal government’s capacity to form operational collaborations among entities that implement security measures whether internal or external. Well-coordinated partnerships that effectively address the problem necessitate identifying various functions and responsibilities. It has been widely recommended that federal agencies develop effective, collaborative relationships with state, regional and local airline authorities along with emergency response units of all levels and law enforcement agencies. These groups should efficiently share intelligence information and come to an agreement regarding security standards, define specific roles and responsibilities and implement verification and testing measures. The TSA will also have to make certain that the terrorist information that has been collected by law enforcement and other agencies such as Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State and the Immigration and Naturalization Service is distributed quickly and efficiently among the various other parties of interest. In the past, the sharing of timely information among the varied agencies involved in aviation security has been hindered by organizations which have been reluctant to distribute information deemed sensitive and by obsolete, mismatched computer systems. The GAO reported in September 2002 that the effective sharing of intelligence can be hampered if staff members within airline agencies endure numerous bureaucratic obstacles when attempting to acquire security clearances needed for critical intelligence information. Of course the cost of securing the airline industry comes with a high financial burden which must be taken into account when discussing the issue. According to DOT’s Inspector General, although TSA has made advancements in addressing certain cost-related issues, “it has not established an infrastructure that provides effective controls to monitor contractors’ costs and performance.” To guarantee control over TSA contracts, DOT’s Inspector General has recommended that the “Congress set aside a specific amount of the TSA’s contracting budget for overseeing contractors’ performance with respect to cost, schedule, and quality” (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2002). Fundamental funding challenges will be first paying for increased airline security and then ensuring that organizations are held accountable for controlling costs. The expenditures associated with acquiring the added tools and personnel in improving aviation safety are immense. TSA required almost five billion dollars for aviation security in 2003, but revenues from the new passenger security fee reached only about one-third of that amount. As a result, TSA will need a major infusion of money from the federal government at a time when the budget deficits have grown out of control, again, requiring Congress to tighten its belt. The costs associated with the funding required to improve airline safety far exceed the amounts taken in. The funding dilemma is not confined to the airline industry however; it applies to all other transportation security concerns as well. For example, Congress approved more than $90 million to fund security enhancements at the country’s more than 350 ports in the year 2002 but TSA was billed almost $700 million for that year’s security improvements. Long-term consideration to cost and accountability for purchases and related industry developments will be critical to ensuring TSA’s success in maintaining its financial integrity (U.S. General Accounting Office, July 2002). Since the tragic events of September 2001, securing the safety of the nation’s airline industry as well as other forms of transportation systems from terrorist attacks has become a priority for the nation, a common goal of great importance. The size of the U.S. air transportation system and the complexities involving the numerous airlines and airports indicates that providing aviation security is a difficult task even under the best of circumstances and when factoring in the unpredictable nature of terrorism, the task is monumental. The combined efforts of federal, state and local agencies along with various private business institutions to bolster airline security are confronted by many long-term institutional challenges. These include ensuring that financial needs are prioritized and that costs are controlled, developing an all-inclusive risk management methodology, establishing operative communications between the many accountable public and private entities, ensuring adequate personnel staffing levels and competency and implementing security standards for airline facilities, employees and security methods. References U.S. Department of Transportation. (June 20, 2002). “Office of Inspector General, Key Challenges Facing the Transportation Security Administration.” CC-2002-180. Washington DC. U.S. General Accounting Office. (May 18, 1998). “Aviation Security: Weak Computer Security Practices Jeopardize Flight Safety.” GAO/AIMD-98-155. Washington DC. U.S. General Accounting Office. (May 25, 2000). “Security: Breaches at Federal Agencies and Airports.” GAO/OSI-0010. Washington DC. U.S. General Accounting Office. (June 28, 2000). “Aviation Security: Long-Standing Problems Impair Airport Screeners’ Performance.” GAO/RCED-00-74. Washington DC. U.S. General Accounting Office. (October 31, 2001). “Homeland Security: A Risk Management Approach Can Guide Preparedness Efforts.” GAO-02-208T. Washington DC. U.S. General Accounting Office. (July 25, 2002). “Aviation Security: Transportation Security Administration Faces Immediate and Long-Term Challenges.” GAO-02-971T. Washington DC. U.S. General Accounting Office. (December 13, 2002). “Mass Transit: Federal Action Could Help Transit Agencies Address Security Challenges.” GAO-03-263. Washington DC. U.S. General Accounting Office. (December 20, 2002). “Aviation Security: Vulnerabilities and Potential Improvements for the Air Cargo System.” GAO-03-344. Washington DC. Read More