Content Editor for this page:
R. Barry Crook
A Call for Consistency in the Quality of Airline Security Screening
Services
December 18, 2001
from the American Society
for Quality
Now that the job of airport security screening has been federalized, what
will be done to give the public the assurance it demands that things will
indeed change?
Simply making the airport security screeners federal employees-or even
paying them more-will not guarantee improvement over the current state of
affairs. The task is made even more daunting by the very tight deadlines
imposed by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. Within just a few
short weeks, the new Undersecretary of Transportation for Security is required
to have developed a training plan for security screening personnel.
And in less than a year the new Transportation Security Administration
within the Department of Transportation will be required to have hired,
trained, supervised and deployed the new force of more than 28,000 airport
security personnel-the largest federal employment project in recent memory.
These circumstances present a unique quality improvement opportunity-
similar in scope and importance to the development of quality methods at the
start of World War II-for both the Department of Transportation and for the
private security contractors that might one day attempt to win back from DoT
the business they just lost at the stroke of a presidential pen. The Department
of Transportation needn't start entirely from scratch in its efforts to improve
the quality of the screening process and the level of customer satisfaction
with a service that is a necessary inconvenience for the traveling public.
Models exist for the certification of individuals performing a particular set
of tasks and for the registration of quality systems to world-class standards.
Quality certification for individuals works hand-in-hand with the ISO
9000-based quality systems standards widely used in private sector industry and
service businesses. These approaches are readily adaptable to airport security
applications.
Independent, third-party certification of individual airport security
screeners and registration of quality systems have several advantages. They
work whether the training and supervision of airport security personnel are
carried out by federal employees or by private contractors. They instill
confidence among the flying public that evaluations are unbiased, since they
are not awarded by the same organization that is performing the training. They
give travelers a greater assurance of consistency-that airport security in
Albuquerque is as good as that in Atlanta or anywhere else.
These measures ensure a system for ongoing quality assurance that lasts long
after the initial attention paid to airport security has faded. Because these
quality system details are out of the public eye, they could easily be
overlooked in the rush to meet the deadlines of the new legislation. To do so
would be a huge mistake.
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