TSA Administrator Neffenger on Refining Airport Security

TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger talks:

• Efficiency versus effectiveness
• The security line of the future
• Trusted traveler programs

When Peter Neffenger was sworn in as administrator of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration in July 2015, the TSA was not experiencing halcyon days. The agency had just failed a covert inspection in which prohibited items, including fake weapons, repeatedly made their way past screeners. Neffenger, however, saw it as "an opportunity to ask some hard questions about the fundamental mission of the agency, to refocus us on the mission and do a deep dive on the root causes of those findings." Since then, he has overseen sweeping changes in the organization, including massive training, improved operational efficiency and a tremendous increase in enrollment in trusted traveler programs. He spoke with BTN transportation editor Michael B. Baker.

BTN: What was the state of the TSA when you started compared with where it is now?

Neffenger: I came in right on the heels of that leaked [Department of Homeland Security] inspector general's report suggesting TSA was not as good as it needed to be in the fundamental mission of screening people coming to the airports. That was a challenging time for TSA. Our first focus was to ensure we were doing the job we were hired to do and find out whether we had a major failure, and if we did, how to get around that. What that led to was a stand-down across the whole agency. There were about 60,000 people in the agency, and we, over the course of August and September of 2015, retrained the entire agency eight hours at a time. We called it mission essentials, back to basics. We found we had a disproportionate focus on efficiency at the expense of effectiveness at the checkpoint itself, and we learned we needed to be more explicit about the ways in which the equipment worked. We really retooled our entire frontline operation. The frontline workforce is working hard and has doubled down on their training and commitment. Everyone recommitted to the security mission this past year, and they're doing a superb job.

BTN: Could you highlight some of the key changes?

Neffenger: The major operational change we put in place this summer was to set up an airport operations system focused solely on managing the approaches to the checkpoint. We do a daily phone call with the top 30 airports, which represent over 70 percent of the traveling population any given day, and the airlines. They report what they're expecting to see, what problems they're having and their projection for the coming day. It's driven them to work very collaboratively together to identify problems as they arise so they don't become crises, and we can move resources or technicians. Say you have an X-ray machine go down. It [doesn't stay] down two or three days now. In real time, we dispatch a technician, and we're back up within a number of hours. Even if you have a small spike, it doesn't turn into a crisis that extends over time.

We also discontinued some practices like managed inclusion, the practice of randomly reassigning people from standard lanes to Precheck lanes on the spot. I knew we'd be pushing a lot of people back in standard lanes at the same time we were increasing vigilance at screening, so I was afraid we would create some long lines. We also were a 5,800-person-fewer agency than we had been from 2011. Most of those were frontline screeners from that workforce, so I was certain we didn't have enough people on board to meet the growing demand. We also were scheduled to reduce by another 1,660 frontline officers in fiscal year 2016. Concurrent with changing operations, we approached Congress and said we needed to turn off the reduction in fiscal year '16 and start rehiring. We worked closely with the administration and Congress to amend our budget to keep the people [who had been] scheduled to leave and put in some reprogramming that would allow us to hire more people.

BTN: How do you balance efficiency for travelers while maintaining necessary levels of security?

Neffenger: Clearly, you need to move people efficiently through the line. In addition to being responsible for security, we're also very much a part of the system that we regulate and oversee. If we don't operate efficiently, the system doesn't operate efficiently. Over time, the airlines and airports have done a tremendous job of modernizing and becoming more efficient. You go to kiosks to print out your boarding pass or print them out at home. You have self-bag-tagging these days. Everything has been designed to move you more efficiently through the airport until you come to TSA, and we're the old-style, stand-in-line roadblock that existed in the past. Security will always have some inconvenience attached to it, but we can be far more efficient. We have to start by being good at what we do and recognize that managing the efficiency of the system has to be done independently of the checkpoint itself.

We looked at how we could begin to manage the approaches better and how we could build more production efficiency in the system: Going with automated screening lanes, working with the airlines to coordinate their scheduling with our understanding of the arrivals and peak periods alike and dramatically increasing our participation in trusted traveler programs like Precheck. We started a big advertising push this past year, working with credit card companies and other traveler reward programs like Marriott Rewards and the airline programs. We've seen a fourfold increase in enrollments just over the past year, which has dramatically improved our ability to be efficient because we have more people moving through expedited screening. We're over 12 million total enrolled in trusted traveler programs, which includes Precheck, Global Entry, Nexus, SENTRI and previously cleared populations like Department of Defense clearance holders.

BTN: How did you boost enrollment to that degree?

Neffenger: We worked with a private vendor. They've developed mobile enrollment capabilities and have a couple of mobile enrollment vans and do pop-up sites at conventions and the like. If you were at GBTA, you saw the mobile enrollment center we put there, and they were doing about 400 a day. We work with major corporations to encourage them to get their frequent travelers to sign up. Microsoft Corp., for example, has purchased Precheck or Global Entry for the employee base they consider their frequent travelers, and they in turn provided their generic business case that showed it was worthwhile, which was sent out in a letter to the Fortune 100 companies to encourage them to do the same.

BTN: Will we see more automated lanes?

Neffenger: Absolutely. Three airlines have stepped forward to purchase new technology on our behalf and give it back to the federal government: United, American and Delta. Delta Air Lines was the first, with two automated lanes in Atlanta they installed in May. They're expanding that operation. Those three airlines together are looking at as many as 100 new automated screening lanes by midsummer next year. United is transforming their terminal at Newark, consolidating into a centralized checkpoint. By [this month], half of that checkpoint will be completed, with all automated screening lanes, and by March, they'll have the remainder completed, with 17 automated lanes in a centralized checkpoint, which will make passenger flow a lot better there. You're going to see a tremendous acceleration of transformation in the screening environment in the coming year.

BTN: Is there a limit to how many people you'd like to see in trusted traveler programs?

Neffenger: If you define a frequent traveler as someone who makes three or more trips per year, I'd like to get that population of people into Precheck because it would dramatically change the way you conduct screening in airports. You'd have mostly expedited screening lanes and very few standard lanes. Within the expedited lanes, you can envision doing even more expedited screening for some, similar to right now: We have known crew member lanes where pilots and flight crews, who have submitted additional information about themselves, go through minimal screening and can bypass a lot of the security procedures. I like the idea of getting a fully vetted population and using more biometrics. If you want to opt in to do facial recognition or fingerprinting scanning and the like, people can walk themselves through the system and become their boarding pass as they go through.

BTN: How much does TSA collaborate with similar agencies around the world tasked with airport security?

Neffenger: Quite a bit. I just got back from a couple of international conferences: the [AVSEC] aviation security World Conference sponsored by [the International Air Transport Association] in Malaysia last month and a conference in the Middle East, where among other things, we talk about best practices. We're very excited about the UN Security Council resolution adopted in September of this year, Resolution 2309, which states affirmatively the importance of global aviation security, consistency, coordination and gives us a powerful coalescing concept to work with. It's critical that we raise standards to consistent levels globally and work to develop capacity in areas that aren't at the standard we would like, look at consistency in the way we do security and take advantage of best practices we see elsewhere. The automated screening lanes that we're installing here have been in place in London Heathrow and Amsterdam Schiphol airport for some time now.