Excuse Me, Would You Like To Join A Sinking Ship?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, The War On TerrorismLooks like the Department of Homeland Security is having problems filling some top slots. 25% of them to be exact.
Yes, you read that right, a quarter of the top slots at the DHS are not filled. Why?
As of May 1, Homeland Security had 138 vacancies among its top 575 positions, with the greatest voids reported in its policy, legal and intelligence sections, as well as in immigration agencies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard. The vacant slots include presidential, senior executive and other high-level appointments, according to the report by the majority staff of the House Homeland Security Committee.A DHS spokesman challenged the report’s tally, saying that it is skewed by a sudden expansion this spring in the number of top management jobs. Before then, only 12 percent of positions were unfilled in a department that has always been thinly staffed at headquarters, spokesman Russ Knocke said. [...]
Nevertheless, congressional auditors, management consultants and academic experts on government have warned that several trends are undercutting efforts to improve DHS management. The department faces high turnover because top officials are in demand in a private sector willing to pay lucrative salaries. It is heavily dependent on contractors, yet its staff to manage them is overstretched. Partisan political combat over homeland security issues has also made jobs less attractive.
So what this comes down to is credibility. Who wants to join an organization with no credibility and little to offer in the way of leadership? And who wants to join ANY government organization when people are being appointed to positions who have no business being there in the first place?
Show of hands?
This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 10th, 2007 at 7:16 am
[...] On to matters of more weight, Justin Gardner chimes in on the recruiting woes of the DHS and the “interim mid-July assessment” of “progress” in Iraq. [...]
July 10th, 2007 at 7:55 am
I believe that most of the jobs are Career SES positions and not political appointees. The Career SES will still be around in a change of administration. It is that it takes 6 months to a year to hire an SES when all of the rules are followed.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:42 am
The appointed positions maybe vacant because the administration is having a hard time finding people who are competent and can pass the Bush loyalty test. Patronage jobs have always been a two-edged sword: the lower-level bureaucrats are stuck with bosses who may not be competent for the positions they hold, but the up-side is they are gone from office in a maximum of eight years.