United States Federal Government: Restructuring Today for a Safer Tomorrow?

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Acquisition Management System (AMS) is non-regulatory in nature and establishes policy and guidance for acquiring the products and services needed for TSA to achieve its mission. It is intended to simplify, streamline and integrate the business arrangements (e.g. contracts, grants) used by TSA into a system that increases the quality, reduces the time and decreases the cost of delivering products and services to its customers. The Transportation Security Administration is exempt from use of the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) for the acquisition of supplies and services. The TSA AMS uses as its basis, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Acquisition Management System (AMS).

A non-regulatory system for acquisitions of products and services, which have a direct bearing on the security of America, seems an oddity. Again the focus seems to shifting more and more to decreasing time and cost. What about trust worthiness of the company? Is the focus getting lost in this era of fast paced staffing? Do we want America’s security to be ‘simple’ or do we want it to be ‘stringent’?

Let’s move on to another example of lost focus. Access Control and Security Systems magazine published an article by Michael Fickes on August 1, 2003 which was titled, “Uncle Sam wants private guards”. This is a summary of the information it contains:

“For the first time in 20 years, the U.S. Army is asking private security firms to provide new security services for domestic military facilities. Issued on June 27, an Army Contracting Agency (ACA) request for proposal (RFP) outlines a program that may employ 500 or more private security officers for $20-25 million.

The RFP follows a recent change in the law. Under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, the Department of Defense (DoD) has not been permitted to hire private security firms to provide guards for domestic military installations unless it was renewing contracts that began before Sept. 24, 1983. The 2003 Defense Authorization Act, signed last December, amends Title 10 to permit the use of private security for certain functions until December 2005″

– http://govtsecurity.securitysolutions.com/ar/security_uncle_sam_wants/index.htm

As if the current flexibility in laws was not enough, we have moved on to amend all possible laws to allow more contractors in. Are we acting in some sort of frenzy and just trying to shoot down anything that comes in the way of allowing more contractors-in? I hope we don’t end up changing the constitution completely in favor of private agencies. If it comes to that then maybe the revision of the constitution would be handed over to private agencies too.