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The Transportation Security Administration gets maligned frequently for some of its sillier requirements, like requiring people to take off their shoes to shamble through security lines. But the agency also does some smart things, like this multi-airport pilot that lets folks bring up bar codes on their smart phones and scan them through at security checkpoints and boarding gates, rather than requiring them to print out paper tickets at home or at the airport. TSA is always going to be caught between competing security mandates and customer service imperatives, an extremely complicated set of opposing values to navigate. And it's even more complicated because TSA is one of the agencies that has a lot of contact with the public, and has that contact at a point when people are impatient, nervous about missing flights, etc. Under those circumstances, it's surprising to me that the agency manages as well as it does, and that more often than not, the TSA officers I deal with are helpful, respectful, and patient with me even when I'm not always feeling patient with them. Are there folks who are rude, deliberately slow, etc? Sure. But it's a huge organization with a very complicated mandate, and all in all, it's trying to move that mandate forward. I give them a lot of credit for that.

Greg Sargent over at WhoRunsGov watches (okay, reads through) the Sunday shows so I don't have to, and comes away with the following observation about President Obama: "It's hard to avoid the conclusion that he's still not quite engaging the eternal American debate about government, and could be making a stronger, more affirmative case that government has often been a force for good in people's lives.That, after all, is what Obama believes. It's what this whole debate is really about. It's a case that Obama has the rhetorical chops to make. Why not stake out a stronger position?"

It's a good question. I think one answer is that in part, the job of making that case has been farmed out to intermediaries like John Berry, who are making more specific cases for respect for certain parts of government. But it does seem like an odd--and potentially problematic--political strategy for a president whose agenda relies on the idea that people will trust the government, whether to run a public option, or to help produce green energy.

If you've noticed that comments are getting posted a little more slowly than usual, my apologies. We've been hit by a flood of spam, and it's taking me much longer to wade through it to post the stuff that's real. Hopefully this will subside soon. In the mean time, please keep posting.

Rebecca Neal notes that Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are developing a pilot for Fox about Internal Revenue Service employees that casts them as underdogs, and has hired a writer who has done work for The Office to write it. I have decidedly mixed feelings about this.

First, it's fantastic that two very successful Hollywood figures are seriously pursuing a show about federal employees that isn't about law enforcement officers or the military. Not that those categories of federal workers don't deserve attention, but in a world where we're about to have an NCIS spin-off, I think we can agree that the market is maybe a little over-saturated. Bones is one of the only shows that portrays federal scientists, and so any diversity in the portrayals is a net positive. I'm not necessarily sure about the choice of the IRS as the agency, if only because it's an agency that a lot of people already know exists, so it doesn't broaden public understanding of the kind of things government does. But given misconceptions about tax collection and the use of taxes, it could be useful for debunking falsehoods and humanizing the agency.

Second, I'm a tad worried about the choice of writers. The impulse to treat federal employees as deserving underdogs is a good one. But I'm concerned that the writers behind The Office and the producers behind Arrested Development won't be able to resist making them look deluded, even if their intentions are good. That has always been my concern with Parks & Recreation: that even if the folks involved are goodhearted, they look like like fools precisely because they care passionately about the process of governing.

We won't be able to tell until we get to see that pilot. But even if the project is a failure, I think the fact it's being taken seriously and attempted is a good thing.

So, Matt Yglesias doesn't think very much of the way David Ignatius is approaching the question of how CIA operatives who break the law should be punished. It's a politically interesting, and important, debate to be having. But it's also extremely far-removed from the operational questions at hand: who orders CIA operatives to take illegal actions? Who sanctions compliance with those orders? What happens to people who refuse? What mechanisms exist to punish people who break laws against orders? All of those little checks and balances within individual agencies, and within individual intelligence officers, are critically important. I understand why people have the meta-level debates, truly I do. Questions of national character are not to be taken lightly. But if we're concerned about how these things happen, we have to know how they happen. There have been dramatic stories about struggles within the Justice Department to evaluate and get people to sign off on certain interrogation policies, but they're really only about that first question in the chain of events.

At last! After a run-off, the union announced yesterday that Paul Rinaldi, the current vice president, will be the air traffic controllers' next leader. He'll have the interesting task of implementing the union's next contract with the Federal Aviation Administration, and repairing a deeply fractured relationship between the agency and the controllers.

You know, if you were going to spend $6.5 billion building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and performing all sorts of upgrades to the technology Border Patrol agents use to patrol the area, you might want to have some sort of measurement of whether or not that money is buying results, right? According to a new Government Accountability Office report, not so much:

The deployment of 661 miles of tactical infrastructure projects along the southwest border is nearing completion, but delays persist, due mainly to property acquisition issues. In addition, per mile costs, which had climbed substantially, are now less likely to change because contracts for the 661 miles of fence have been awarded. CBP plans to complete 10 more miles of fencing using fiscal year 2009 funds, and fiscal year 2010 and 2011 funds are to be used primarily for supporting infrastructure. A life cycle cost study has been completed which estimates deployment, operations, and future maintenance for the tactical infrastructure will total $6.5 billion. Despite the investment in tactical infrastructure, its impact on securing the border has not been measured because DHS has not assessed the impact of the tactical infrastructure on gains or losses in the level of effective control.

Now, I know the project isn't finished, there are a lot of factors at work, etc. But you've got some of the fence built. Might be worth having some numbers on hand to explain whether or not it's working, especially if your costs are rising. Just a thought.

There's been a lot of discussion in mainstream news outlets about the outrage Republicans and conservative commentators have been whipping up about President Obama's czars. The Democratic National Committee actually released a web ad demonstrating that President Bush appointed plenty of czars himself:

And the Washington Post noted this morning that Russ Feingold, an unquestionably liberal Senator, has written to the White House to ask President Obama to justify his use of the appointments. I actually think this is an entirely reasonable position. The czars may not be evidence of some nefarious power-grab by President Obama. But it doesn't mean that the appointments are a good idea from a managerial perspective. Just because they've become a habit, doesn't mean they're a good, or effective one.

By Robert Brodsky

It looks like business is about to pick up on the oversight front at the Defense Contract Audit Agency. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the beleaguered agency on September 23 asking the relatively simple question: who is responsible for reform at DCAA?

Few details are yet known about the hearing but expect the release of a follow-up report on DCAA auditory concerns by the Government Accountability Office and possibly a report by the Defense Department Inspector General on reports of retaliation against whistleblowers and harassment of agency auditors.

Government Executive reported exclusively last month that the GAO had found widespread deficiencies in audits conducted by the DCAA. Investigators examined 37 audit reports issued between 2004 and 2006 and found problems with every single audit.

Expect DCAA critics to cite the report as further proof that the agency is in disarray and that management needs to be replaced. And, expect DCAA leadership to cite the timeline for the GAO investigation--which date back almost six years--and how the agency has made most of its major reforms in the past year.

The recent findings are reminiscent of a July 2008 GAO report , which sparked the first contentious hearing last September of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee . Don't be surprised to see fireworks again.

Al Kamen has a smart look at the problems that have prevented the Obama administration from finding someone to head the U.S. Agency for International Development. While vetting challenges have been blamed for the failure to get Partners in Health founder Paul Farmer into the position, Kamen says that the problems go beyond one process and one individual:

But there's an increasing feeling in the foreign aid community that the leadership required to rescue a long-sinking ship is not going to be easy to find. As one observer noted: "Anyone smart enough to do the job is smart enough not to take it," especially when it's unclear whether USAID will be part of the State Department, as Clinton prefers, or whether it will be an independent, Cabinet-level agency, as many aid experts advocate.

If there's one area of private-sector corporate compensation that really makes sense to me, it's the large rewards for people who genuinely turn around failing companies. I'd be curious as to how management reform in the federal government can best be incentivized. I've long thought this was a significant problem for political leadership at agencies, but I can't think of a good solution anyone's proposed for rewarding political leaders differently. Most of the discussion about pay and other incentives focuses on rank-and-file federal employees and stops around the level of the Senior Executive Service, but that conversation may need to extend upwards.