DHSDHS hobbled by vacancies at top positions

Janet Napolitano’s departure from DHS has left the agency’s top spot open, but it is not the only position currently open.

NPR reports that fifteen top positions at the agency are now open, or will be in the near future. Some of these posts are filled on a temporary basis, including deputy secretary. Lawmakers are increasingly frustrated that the vacancies are not being filled, and want the Obama administration to move more energetically on the issue.  

DHS was created in 2003 by moving twenty-two different government agencies under one administrative roof. Among the agencies are Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the United States Coast Guard (USCG).

Representative Jason Chaffetz, (R-Utah), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, says the Obama administration is paying enough attention to the vacancies and DHS, and Democrats agree.

“The Obama administration needs to make it a priority,” Chaffetz told NPR. “It’s one of the biggest agencies that we have, [and] it’s got one of the lowest levels of morale on record based on the surveys. And when you have vacancies at the top, you have this vacuum that’s unfulfilled, and there is a total lack of leadership.”

“It is a bad situation,” Senator Tom Carper (D-Delaware), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said. “I call it executive branch Swiss cheese. And it’s not that the people in these acting positions are inept or bad people, but there’s a special stature that comes by Senate confirmation.”

“Customs and border protection — the role of commissioner for that has been vacant [and] filled by acting people for … nearly a year and a half,” says Christian Beckner, deputy director of George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute.

Beckner told NPR that it is not only the stature, and more importantly the authority, that comes with having a Senate-confirmed leader in charge: the vacancies and temporary leaders have a greater effect behind the front-line operations at the department.

“What it does impede is the ability of anticipating what the next challenges are, and making the key policy and operational decisions about where they should be investing for the future, [and] what policies should be put forward,” he says.

Making things worse are the results of a survey conducted by the Partnership for Public Service, which found that DHS ranks at the bottom of the list government agencies based on how satisfied employees are with their work conditions.  According to Max Stier, the president of the group, one reason for vacancies is that employees do not believe promotions are based on job performance.

“We should want and expect an employee group that is at least as good, at least as engaged, as what you’d find in the private sector,” Stier toldNPR. “What the employees of [DHS] are telling the public, Congress and the president is that the agency isn’t giving them what they need to succeed in their jobs, and that’s a real problem.”

The vacancies, in theory, should be easier to fill because most of them do not require Senate confirmation.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee has scheduled a hearing on the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas for deputy secretary, bur if he is approved for the position, his current job as the head of USCIS will itself become vacant.