Started shortly after she took office, the “Efficiency Review” was meant to promote cost-savings and centralization of DHS headquarters options. One of the by-products of these efforts meant that only one person from DHS could speak on a program agenda/conference/workshop, and only then after the speaking invitation was vetted through multiple channels and forms. Additionally, it curtailed DHS employees from attending conferences, workshops, and public meetings where others are gathered who have interest and expertise in what the department does in multiple areas . Those meetings, from the formal to the informal, produce relationships: they exchange information, allow people to become better informed, and create and strengthen networks for the good days when everything is going OK, but most certainly on the bad ones when the “you know what hits the fan.”

 

To get around some of these imposed “efficiencies,” DHS employees, career and political, have literally taken to taking annual leave to attend various workshops, meetings and conferences so they can connect with persons outside of the department who have other talents, expertise and insights in areas that they regularly work in as part of their jobs. There’s nothing “efficient” about such an initiative or practice – in fact it’s insulting. The overwhelming majority of the department’s personnel have been entrusted with significant responsibilities as well as security clearances. If you trust them with those responsibilities, why can’t you trust them in making a decision as to the efficiency of using their time to go and meet with stakeholders outside the department without having to fill out a form for clearance or abide by a single person attendance/participation policy at an event?

A new secretary who removes these practices and allows people to attend and engage in relationship-building practices can greatly contribute to a truly demoralized headquarters operation that exists today.

As quaint, protective and historic as the red brick walls of DHS’ Nebraska Avenue Complex might be, it is the engagements and relationships that occur outside of those physical boundaries with stakeholder communities inside and outside of the Beltway that truly matter.

Yes, it is true that there have been abuses of conferences and workshops by the GSA, the IRS, the DoD and others in the past few years, but those aberrations are few in number and small in comparison to the value added that occurs when people from different backgrounds actually get to engage face to face and interact. Networks have value, and if they don’t get established and are not built upon, they can’t produce results. In these areas, I find the Napolitano era dramatically lacking.

 

Caring About the Private Sector / Restoring its “Office”

This again will sound like the sour grapes of a former political appointee looking back at his old office, and you know what? They are. When I look back at the Private Sector Office under the leadership of then-Assistant Secretary Al Martinez-Fonts and compare it to what it is today, it’s not a comparison. [Full disclosure: Al Martinez-Fonts was my boss at DHS and I still work with him today at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation]. The one time “little office that could” that broke open engagement of the private sector in multiple areas of the department, notably FEMA, TSA, etc., is now a shadow of its former self in sheer numbers, actions and impact.