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TSA Weekly: Jan. 12 - 16, 2009

TSA employees participate in a farewell event for Administrator Kip Hawley (seated) and his wife, Janet (to Hawley's right), at headquarters Jan. 12
TSA employees participate in a farewell event for Administrator Kip Hawley (seated) and his wife, Janet (to Hawley's right), at headquarters Jan. 12. Deputy Administrator Gale Rossides credited Hawley with being instrumental in building a "workforce that is engaged, an industry that is appreciated, a leadership team that is ready and an American public that feels safer." She noted his "unique and uncanny ability to inspire, encourage, lift spirits, and remind us why we are all here." Hawley was TSA's longest serving administrator and visited more than 100 airports. "For many at TSA, you changed not only what their jobs were every day, you changed how they felt about doing those jobs and your impact is beyond measure," said Rossides. Photo by Brigitte Dittberner

The Hawley Era: Stronger Security Built on Risk Management, Intel and Workplace Improvements

By Mike Simons, Norm Brewer and Andy Szul, Office of Strategic Communications/Public Affairs

During the Kip Hawley era, from July 2005 to January 2009, TSA's senior leadership continually challenged the TSA workforce to improve transportation security and at the same time sought opportunities to better the work environment.

As the agency's fourth administrator departs, his successor, Gale Rossides, and the senior leadership team will manage an arsenal of security initiatives, completed or well into development, that provide a foundation for making intel-driven security systems even more potent going forward.

"Kip was like the Sherlock Holmes to our Watsons," said former Assistant Administrator for Security Operations Mike Restovich. "He'd see the same set of facts but come to a different conclusion." It was from this unique perspective, one grounded in operational experience, that so many positive security changes arose.

Logo of the National Advisory CouncilThe Hawley era was characterized by innovation, risk management, intel-driven operations, and collaboration: "War Room" teams tackling specific projects; cross-pollinating initiatives like VIPR teams; and the creation of the National Advisory Council, with its front-line workers and assistant federal security directors identifying needed improvements in the field and making recommendations to headquarters.

Besides workplace improvements that, in themselves, have clear security benefits, collaboration produced three major changes:

By acting on current intelligence and focusing on intent rather than things, TSA's leadership spent considerable energy working with Congress to repeal the ban on lighters while simultaneously creating and fostering the behavior detection officer program that takes into account the human factor to stop an attack.

Logo of Security EvolutionEvolution dovetailed with the switch from things to people by tapping into the TSA workforce's drive to stay engaged on the frontlines, creating calm in the airports, and enhancing the security effectiveness of the agency's people, processes and technology.

The team effort required to reach those goals is graphically illustrated by the long timeline of events that tracks TSA since July of 2005 (intranet). While the focus has been primarily on aviation, the security of other transportation sectors - from ports to mass transit, highways to pipelines to railroads - have been bolstered, too - all captured in a timeline that goes well beyond what a single individual effort could accomplish.

Logo of the I Am TSA campaignHawley has been well aware that his infectious enthusiasm and optimism could only go so far. That helps explain why his congressional testimony is laced with "TSA" and "we," rather than "I." It's why senior leaders embraced the Idea Factory, giving the entire workforce a forum for suggestions that have resulted in dozens of changes - to security and to the workplace and to sharpen awareness of the TSA Core Values of Integrity, Innovation and Team Spirit.

Along the way, TSA has become unusually transparent, particularly for a security agency. Intelligence remains close-hold, but policy and performance are fair game to travelers and others, for example TSA's Evolution of Security Blog that has drawn praise for its unusually frank - and public - exchanges.

That same transparency and inclusive dialogue was applied internally. "It felt empowering," said Wayne Carey, former co-chairman of the NAC, describing the interactions he had with Hawley and other senior leaders. "I wish everyone could feel how we felt. Leadership cared. They felt our pain."

By establishing the NAC, TSA's leadership ensured direct engagement by field employees in discussions about TSA's policies, PASS payouts being one example.

"PASS had been announced about a year before, and the cycle was over, but no payouts had been announced," Carey recalled. "I stood up at a meeting and said, 'Hey, we need to know the dollar amounts - we can't go back to the airports without the dollar amounts.'"

"I thought I'd get reprimanded. I thought I violated some protocol. Kip got excited and my heart skipped a beat. But instead of a letter in my file, Kip pumped his fist and said, ‘Now that's the leadership we need from our officers. We need to be challenged.'"

PASS (Performance Accountability and Standards System) also is illustrative of a willingness to change. It had become "cumbersome, duplicative, time consuming and burdensome" for field supervisors to use, recalled Richard Whitford, assistant administrator for Human Capital.

So Whitford and his team assembled the paperwork needed for just one TSO - thick as a "metropolitan phone book" - and showed it to Hawley. "Oh boy," recalled Whitford. "It was like, ‘What are you going to do about it?'" The fix, as they say, was in.

The principles of transparency and partnership were also vigorously applied to the strategy of building and fostering stakeholder networks. Creating the Transportation Sector Network Management office in the 2005 reorganization of TSA resulted in working more effectively with domestic stakeholders to mitigate threats and vulnerabilities. And in 2007, already strong ties with international stakeholders were enhanced by a new Office of Global Strategies.

Logo of the 3-1-1 for Carry-ons campaignIn August 2006, both international and domestic networking and intelligence sharing paid off many times over when the agency and its partners effectively countered the UK liquids-bomb terrorist threat without disruption to U.S. air travel. Overnight, TSA changed its list of prohibited items, implemented its new policy, and informed airlines of the changes. Within days, TSA had a framework for the 3-1-1 campaign, which is still in place protecting the flying public two-and-a-half years later.

TSA's strong partnerships also led to the quick harmonization of the 3-1-1 rules overseas later that year. Intelligence - like the UK incident itself - left no doubt that the terrorist threat crossed international boundaries.

The liquids-bomb incident also reflects how intelligence has increasingly been incorporated into TSA's risk-management-based operations, said Keith Kauffman, who has been assistant administrator for Intelligence and will be acting deputy administrator through the transition.

That blending continues. Field intelligence officers helped explain classified and unclassified materials to more than 30,000 TSA employees and stakeholders last year, Kauffman said. That underlines the trust and respect that has developed between senior leadership and the frontline workforce as well as the importance of stakeholder networks, Kauffman said. "It's part of the agency's evolution."

The liquids-bomb threat positively spotlighted another key component of the Hawley-era - the professionalization of frontline officers. Operationally, the liquids policy change occurred at the individual level, with each officer learning the reason behind the change and assuming responsibility for making it work.

That understanding of intelligence data and the "why" behind risk-based procedures became integral elements of Evolution's ENGAGE! principles and a key to TSA's professional workforce.

Logo of the I C Me in the Solution campaignEvolution mitigates the threat to transportation security by doing something that had not been done before last year: counter what we do not know about the enemy, not just what we know. That is being accomplished by tapping into the critical thinking skills of each individual officer, teaching command presence and listening skills, and giving those professional officers discretion and confidence to "trust their gut."

By making checklists a baseline, not an end line, for determining whether an individual is a threat, TSA's senior leaders effectively found a way to leverage the experience and airport-environment networks to combat terrorist threats.

Not all of TSA's stakeholders - Congress, security experts, the flying public - agreed with each security element implemented during the Hawley era. But they were better informed and supported TSA more because they could see that what was happening on the ground - at the checkpoint - made sense.

The common threads that run through each Hawley-era initiative are self-improvement, sustainability and transparency. Evolution evolves, networks are fed by new and different ideas, intelligence is strengthened by a stream of updated information, and constant testing leads to validation or demands for correction. Absent Hawley, these elements remain, part of a legacy solidly in place.

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