ISCD Reorganization Continues

The house cleaning at ISCD continues in an apparent effort to get the CFATS program ‘back on track’. I learned this evening that Larry Stanton is one of the latest people to be moved on. Readers of this blog might remember a couple of posts from last year that Larry was working on the Department’s effort to figure out a reasonable way to implement some manner of tracking the voluntary implementation of inherently safer technology at high-risk chemical facilities. I haven’t heard anything about Stanton’s replacement, but I doubt that the person has acquired his expertise on the IST issue.

The way I understand the current situation is that every leadership position outside of the actual inspection force is made-up of temporary, acting personnel. This isn’t a problem of Congressional approval since none of these positions requires the ‘advice and consent’ of the Senate; they are all career positions. No the problem is finding people with the expertise in chemical security matters; this is a relatively new field after all.

Hiring people from the outside is nearly impossible. The few security people that understand chemical manufacturing are commanding much better salaries than the government will ever be able to pay working for large chemical companies. ISCD was forced to do what most mid-size and smaller chemical companies have had to do since 2007; train people with other valuable skills to be chemical security experts.

How We Got Here

Let’s review how we got to this untenable position. In December 2006 Congress told DHS to put together a chemical facility security program from scratch in six months. The only guidance provided by Congress was a series of things that DHS could not do. The Department accomplished the task of writing the regulations in near record time. They then developed a list of just over 300 chemicals that might make an industrial, commercial, educational or what ever facility a potential target for terrorist attack and established a minimum quantity for each of those chemicals that would make such an attack worth while.

Then the Department developed from scratch an innovative on-line data collection tool that allowed any facility with the covered chemicals to provide enough data to DHS to allow the initial determination of whether a facility holding the covered chemicals was in a position to be at a credible level of threat of being attacked by terrorists because of the chemicals made/used/stored on-site. In just a little over a year from the date of the Congressional mandate that allowed DHS to reduce over 30,000 possible facilities of concern to just over 7,000.

Next DHS developed, again from scratch, another innovative on-line data collection tool that allowed those 7,000+ facilities to provide additional data about their facility and surrounding community. This SVA tool allowed the folks at ISCD to make a final determination of the risk of terrorist attack and place covered facilities into one of four risk-based tiers.

Before DHS could require facilities to develop effective security programs they had to develop the standards by which effectiveness would be measured. Since Congress prohibited DHS from requiring any specific security measures, these standards not only had to be effective from a security point of view, but they also had to be politically correct as well. So, DHS wrote, published for comment and revised the Risk-Based Performance Standards (RBPS) Guidance Document; again it was done in record time.

All of this was being done while DHS had to fight political battles with at least two of the most powerful lobbying groups in American politics, the agriculture industry and the petrochemical industry. They partially caved before the Ag Lobby and mainly held against the gasoline people. Every thing considered it was a pretty impressive record for an upstart Executive Branch agency.

With one major objective left to accomplish ISCD made their first significant mistake. To collect data on site security plans they went back to the same type of innovative on-line data collection tool that had brought them so far so successfully. Unfortunately, the longest, most complex tool that they had developed to date just did not provide enough information for the Department to determine whether or not the site security plan was sufficient to meet the vague requirements of the RBPS.

Rather than go back and try to revamp that tool and making it complex enough to provide the necessary data, the management of ISCD decided to use the inspection force that was being under utilized waiting to begin inspecting facility compliance with their approved SSP. They sent those inspectors out to help the facilities develop the necessary data that would allow for the proper evaluation of the effectiveness of their site security plans.

It was only after that Pre-Authorization Inspection program was well under way that DHS realized that they had set themselves up for a nearly impossible situation. With 4,000+ facilities still in the program, there wasn’t going to be enough time to conduct all of the PAI’s necessary to get the SSP data needed for DHS to conduct their evaluations.

And Now What Do We Do?

So, like any bureaucracy, the management of NPPD decided to ignore all of the things that the management team at ISCD had done right and then decide that those same people were incapable of correcting the current problem. Move out all of the people that understood what had been done right to ensure that the interim team would not be distracted in their job of fixing the current problem. Make sure that anyone left remaining from the team that had done so much correctly knew that it was in their best interest to keep their mouths shut if they wanted to keep their jobs.

Fortunately for Under Secretary Beers, no one in Congress appears to notice. At least no one is really interested in asking any questions. With good reason; Congress couldn’t get its act together to provide real guidance on how the program should be established; wouldn’t provide the necessary resources, and spent more time arguing over who should have oversight responsibility than was spent on actual oversight of the program.

How else could a Congressional committee accept being told that ‘his people’ had been told that they would complete the remaining 41 Tier 1 PAI’s before the end of the year. No, he didn’t say that they would approve the remaining Tier 1 SSPs (4 have been approved, none have passed inspection) by the end of the year, but the 41 remaining PAI’s. At that rate it will be 30 years before all of the high-risk chemical facilities have approved and inspected security programs. GIVE. ME. A. BREAK.

What Needs to Be Done

Let’s bring back the team that did almost everything correctly. Apologize to them for over-reacting to their one, understandable, shortcoming. Tell them to do what they did with every other tool they developed; revise the tool to reflect what information is really needed from the facilities. Then provide the review resources that ISCD needs to evaluate the information. If you can’t increase the head count, then hire contractors to do the review.

Or you can always take the EPA/OSHA way to compliance. Have the high risk facilities certify that they have an adequate site security plan. Then, when a successful terrorist attack proves the certification wrong, you can send a team in to find all of the short comings and fine the hell out of them. Those fines always make the victims feel better.

Reader Comment – Misguided Information

An anonymous reader posed a comment to my earlier blog about the ISCD reorganization. On a positive note Anonymous pointed out my misspelling of Rick Driggers’ name; my apologies to Mr. Driggers. Anonymous also pointed out that I got Sue Armstrong’s title incorrect, she is currently Deputy Assistant Secretary not the Assistant Secretary; again my apologies though I doubt Ms. Armstrong took offense at my inadvertent promotion.

The remainder of the comment is critical of the post; Anonymous wrote:

“I don't know who your inside source is but boy have the given you some misguided information. Its obvious that you have no idea what is really going on. … It is obvious to me and all that reads this that you got your information from someone who doesn't want to see changes that are actually good. If you really knew what was going on here you would know that 80 percent of the staff were untrustful of previous senior leadership that was in place. My suggestion to you is to please do more research and not go by what is said by your ‘inside source’! ”

I wish that Anonymous had provided more information about exactly what part of the information presented in the blog was misguided. The only part of the blog that came from multiple ‘insider’ sources was the description of the changes that were made at ISCD. I did not mention what those sources thought of the changes because they were not willing (for obvious reasons) to have their identity disclosed in the blog and I don’t like quoting ‘anonymous’ sources.

Of course, most people do realize that ‘insider sources’ are seldom complimentary in their evaluation of the information that they provide to bloggers or the press. People making positive comments about their organization are normally willing to be quoted. I certainly realize this and filter the information accordingly.

In any case, I would be interested in knowing what parts of the reorganization that I got wrong. I would certainly be interested in posting any information provided by Mr. Driggers or his press representative about that reorganization. It would seem to me that a press release about the reorganization of such an important part (to the regulated chemical security community) of DHS would certainly be in order.

I do find it interesting that Anonymous claims that 80% of the staff mistrusted the previous leadership. I’m wondering if that ‘mistrusted’ leadership was the previous ‘acting director’, Dennis Deziel, or the Director, Sue Armstrong.

ISCD Reorganization

Effective tomorrow there will be a significant reorganization of the Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD), the organization within NPPD that runs the CFATS program. Rick Diggers, the new acting director (as of December 20th) has directed the reorganization that will place the inspection force under his direct control, and moving all engineering, analysis, document review and industry relation work to the Compliance Branch (currently headed by a new acting branch chief, reportedly with an industry PR background). This greatly reduces the work load (to almost non-existent by some reports) of the three remaining branches of the Division.


Supposedly Diggers was brought into shake up the Division because of delays in CFATS implementation and the slow development of the ammonium nitrate regulations. It seems that the CFATS delays extend beyond the slow completion of SSP approvals. Other delayed areas include program development for:

• Agricultural production facilities currently under a ‘temporary Top Screen exemption’ since 2008;
• Reviewing and approving alternative security programs; and
• Reviewing and approving requests for re-determination (over 600 pending).

Rumors abound that the reorganization was directed and guided by Sue Armstrong, the former Director of ISCD and currently Assistant Secretary for NIPD where she still retains responsibility for ISCD. If true, this would be interesting since the problems date back to her tenure as Director. Actually it seems that many of the current problems being experienced by ISCD, including the personnel issues that I’ve discussed before, date back to period when Sue ran the Division and are only now coming to public view.

Since Diggers is statutorily limited to a 120-day tenure as ‘Acting Director’ and NPPD is currently reviewing applications for the permanent director, it seems that these changes may only last until a new director is hired. Since Diggers has never managed a program of this size (either in manpower or budget) before, he is unlikely to remain in the ISCD Director position.

I don’t know enough about the internal workings of ISCD to be able to truly gauge the effectiveness of these changes, but it does seem to me that putting the Regional Commanders of the inspection force under the direct control of the Director is unworkable. Span of control issues, Digger’s lack of knowledge about the CFATS program, the chemical industry (he has an intel background), and security programs in general make it unlikely that he will be able to effectively manage the inspection force.

Oh, well. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this works itself out. I’m getting more and more concerned though that this program is heading the way of so many of poorly managed and supported chemical safety programs. Fortunately, it seems that the terrorists are even more poorly organized and managed. Let’s hope that their lack of organization stays worse than that of ISCD.