Seriously Flawed Decision-Making

I found this article written by James Giermanski under http://www2.csoonline.com/exclusives/column.html?CID=33447, where you can find the full article. Here an extract:

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Recently I met with a small group of former FBI agents at a monthly
breakfast. The conversations, usually connected to past Bureau activities,
moved to the discussion and criticism of Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The flavor of comments follow:
they’re out of touch with industry in the container security area; they’re in
the pocket of big business; they lack vision; they’re arrogant; and they don’t
have leadership; they lack talent; and more. However, while some old crusty
ex-agents said it was “all of the above,” the consensus, if there was one, was
that the fundamental problem within the Department was weak and sometimes flawed
leadership. While I would expect those comments about DHS from a
competitive agency, thinking about the breakfast discussion later that day, it
occurred to me that, perhaps, this really is a core problem, especially with
container security. Therefore, I put together three examples of what I
believe represents seriously flawed decision-making important to our security
and reflective of questionable and inept leadership within the
Department. All examples involve decision-making tied to container
security. The first example involves leadership incongruence within DHS as
demonstrated by CBP’s focus on and fascination with the electronic sensing of
“doors only” access or entry into a sealed container. The second is the
commitment to radio frequency (RF) devices for container security such as either
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags already in use at our ports, or
according to CBP’s Request for Information (RFI) dated December 12, 2007,
the potential use of Bluetooth-related technology using prescribed frequency
ranges published and available through the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC). The third example is CBP’s incredible reliance on import security
programs with their inherent core concern for “inbound” container security to
the exclusion of “export” container security. Only short examples of
each of these three fixations will or should demonstrate the level of competent
leadership within DHS, perhaps making credible the talk around the former
agents’ breakfast table.

Full article

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Comments

Pintradex said…

You should definitely visit an International Trade Data Users (ITDU) meeting. They've discussed the topic before. This issue is huge and I'm amazed at how seldom it is addressed in the media.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008 8:05:00 am

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