GAO says cruise ship safety has improved

The Navigator: Cruise safety’s improvements — or lack thereof

As Carnival Corp. announced plans to salvage the Costa Concordia last week, the world’s attention focused again on cruise safety — or rather, the lack of it. The Concordia struck a reef off the coast of Italy in January and partially sank, claiming the lives of 32 passengers. Carnival will refloat the hull in a $300 million salvage operation said to be the largest in history. Coincidentally, it’s been almost two years since the passage of the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act, a law that promised to make cruising safer by requiring cruise lines to install peepholes in cabin doors, improve the handling of crime evidence and report crimes to the Coast Guard and the FBI. Given that travelers are thinking about security on cruise ships and that the summer vacation season is just around the corner, there’s no better time to ask whether the rules are working as intended. But that’s a hard question to answer. The law couldn’t have prevented the sinking of the Concordia, for example. That was reportedly caused when its captain, Francesco Schettino, foolishly steered his vessel away from its programmed route to do a maneuver known as a sail-by salute. And common sense can’t be legislated, as they say. But what about some of the other provisions? David Peikin, a spokesman for the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), a cruise industry trade group, wouldn’t comment on whether the law is working but insisted that cruising is safe and that passenger safety remains the industry’s “number one” priority. Peikin pointed to several independent studies showing even before the law went into effect that the cruise experience was exceedingly safe and said that cruise lines are reporting crimes to the government as required. I wondered what others thought, so I revisited some of my sources from a 2010 column on the act. Interestingly, that story also featured a quote from a CLIA spokesman about safety being the No. 1 priority. Kendall Carver, chairman of the International Cruise Victims Association, a passenger advocacy group, doesn’t think that the law has helped passengers. “It’s a travesty,” he said. In just the past month, several stories have raised serious concerns about cruise ship safety. A TV exposé about alcohol consumption on cruise ships showed passengers on a Royal Caribbean vessel drinking during a mandatory safety briefing. Royal Caribbean denounced the report as “sensationalistic” and said that it trains its staff in how to serve alcohol to guests in a responsible way. Also, five men in St. Kitts went on trial for robbing 17 cruise passengers on a shore excursion in 2010. The suspects are accused of taking money, phones and jewelry from the passengers in a crime that the St. Kitts & Nevis Observer called “the most infamous crime in St. Kitts in recent time.” And then there’s actor John Travolta, who is reportedly being sued for sexual harassment by Fabian Zanzi, a former cruise line employee. The star of “Pulp Fiction” is accused of accosting Zanzi on a Royal Caribbean ship and offering him $12,000 for sex. Are any of these incidents being reported to the FBI and the Coast Guard? Not exactly. Some of these alleged crimes didn’t take place on cruise ships, so they’re excluded. Others happened before the current reporting requirements went into effect. Peikin says that these incidents, as well as the Costa disaster, have nothing to do with the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act. “There is no connection between the two,” he says. Fair point. But a look at the cruise ship crime statistics that are reported (if you can find them on the Coast Guard Web site) raises other concerns. In the Coast Guard’s latest report, which covers Jan. 1 through March 31, cruise lines disclosed just three incidents involving missing persons and alleged crimes. In the previous quarter, they also reported only three, and in the one before that, zero. In all, cruise lines have reported only 19 crimes to the government since 2011 — a number that to some seems improbably low. One who thinks it’s too low is James Walker, a maritime lawyer based in Miami. “These numbers are even less than the number of crimes the cruise lines will admit occurred,” he says. Back in 2006, Royal Caribbean told Congress that in the previous three years, 66 rapes and sexual assaults had been reported, he says. But in a civil case that Walker’s firm handled, a court ordered the cruise line to produce its raw crime data, which showed that the total number of reported sex-related crimes was actually around 273 — a number that included allegations of sexual assault, sexual battery, sexual harassment and inappropriate touching. The International Cruise Victims Association’s Carver is also skeptical of the crime statistics. He alleges that the actual number of crimes is hundreds of times higher. “That’s the most disappointing part of the new law,” he says. “The statistical database is largely incomplete.” The problem is a loophole in the law, which stipulates that the FBI doesn’t have to include open files in crime statistics. As long as a case isn’t closed, it doesn’t get reported. “Many travel agents are now marketing cruises by referring their clients to the Coast Guard database for the proposition that there are virtually no crimes at all on cruise ships,” Walker adds. “It makes a mockery of the law.” All this makes it difficult to say whether the law is working. There were no comprehensive, publicly reported crime statistics for the cruise industry before the act went into force. And if industry critics are to be believed, no reliable numbers that passengers could compare those crime figures with are being disclosed today, anyway. So it’s impossible to know whether all the other items the act requires — the peepholes, the evidence handling, the additional rights granted victims to sue a cruise line — are doing any good. But that may not be the worst part. With only a few lonely voices, such as Carver and Walker, who advocate primarily for victims, cruise passengers have no organized lobbying presence in Washington to raise their concerns. CLIA spent nearly $2 million lobbying Congress last year, slightly less than what it spent in 2010, which was a record. And that doesn’t include individual lobbying by large cruise lines such as Carnival ($710,000 in 2011) and Royal Caribbean ($1.1 million). So we’re in the same place we were in before the passage of the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act: with no idea how safe a floating vacation actually is. The cruise industry insists that it’s more secure than any land vacation. Critics say that it’s one of the riskier trips you can take. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Elliott is National Geographic Traveler magazine’s reader advocate. E-mail him at chris@elliott.org.

Will a new law force cruise lines to better report onboard crime?

The remarkable thing about the proposed Cruise Passenger Protection Act is that on its face, it looks entirely unremarkable. The law would require cruise lines to publicly report all alleged crimes on a ship and to disclose their passenger contracts in plain English. But dive into the bill, and it delivers a little shock to both passengers and the cruise industry. For travelers, it’s the surprise that, thanks to a legal loophole, cruise lines and the federal government currently don’t do what the new law would require, including publicly reporting every alleged and significant crime committed aboard cruise ships. It’s also a troubling reminder that at sea, you don’t have the same rights as on land. For cruise lines, the bill’s passage would significantly tighten the government’s regulatory screws — a step that the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), says is urgently needed. “I’m convinced that the only way we’re going to make a meaningful difference for consumers is by taking legislative action,” he said in a prepared statement. “We need to make sure this industry gives consumers all the information they need to make a fully informed decision before they book a cruise vacation.” The Cruise Passenger Protection Act was introduced in late July, just before what was expected to be a contentious congressional hearing on the cruise industry’s lack of consumer protections. On the agenda: the need for accurate crime reporting and the issue of safety problems that continue to plague the industry. Instead, the cruise industry took many observers aback by agreeing to voluntarily adopt at least one provision of the bill, a step some industry-watchers believe was meant to render the new law moot. “I was blindsided,” says maritime attorney and cruise industry critic Jim Walker, who attended the hearing. “For eight years, the cruise industry has been saying how safe it is, how heavily regulated it is. “I think they knew that this bill would pass.” Practically speaking, here’s what the industry’s preemptive compliance means: Three major cruise lines — Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line — have voluntarily published on their Web sites a list of major crimes allegedly committed aboard their ships. The reportable crimes include homicides, suspicious deaths, missing persons, kidnappings, assault with “serious” injury, theft of more than $10,000, rape and sexual assault. Previously, these crimes were reported to the Coast Guard, but thanks to a late revision in another bill, only cases that the FBI considered closed needed to be made public. That left passengers with the impression that their vessels were practically crime-free. On its Web site, Norwegian has reported just two alleged crimes on its ships for the first half of 2013: an assault on a passenger involving “serious” bodily injury and one sexual assault. For the past three months, a period when it carried 380,000 passengers, it claims to have a spotless record. The other cruise lines also reported very low crime rates. Carnival claimed just 10 alleged reportable crimes in the last quarter, and Royal Caribbean only six. Rockefeller said that after reviewing the information published online, he believes that “it falls short of what passengers need to make an informed decision about potential safety issues on their vacations.” Specifically, it fails to include reports of sexual crimes against minors. But to the cruise industry, Norwegian’s two incidents reflect the reality of life at sea. By any measure, travel aboard a commercial cruise line is “exceptionally safe,” says David Peikin, a spokesman for the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group. “In many areas, cruising offers passengers more protections and transparency of information than any other hospitality or transportation business.” The cruise industry has taken the concerns of passengers and legislators seriously, he notes. In May, for example, CLIA’s member lines adopted a set of voluntary policies that set minimum standards for safety, comfort and care in the event of a mechanical failure or a shipboard emergency. The Passenger Bill of Rights, Peikin noted, is a legally enforceable agreement between a cruise line and its guests. But some consumer advocates are unimpressed with the cruise industry’s voluntary steps. They say that cruise lines have fought common-sense crime reporting for the better part of a decade and agreed to take these steps only because Congress was about to force their hand. “Cruise lines won’t give anything up unless they have to,” says Kendall Carver, chairman of the International Cruise Victims Association, which represents cruise passengers. The issue is far from resolved. The Cruise Passenger Protection Act contains several provisions that, taken together, would significantly increase government oversight. They include the creation of an advisory committee for passenger vessel consumer protection and the addition of a new director-level position within the Transportation Department to act as a liaison between victims of cruise crime and the federal government. Among other things, the law authorizes the secretary of homeland security to withhold or revoke the clearance required to operate a cruise ship if a company doesn’t report its crimes or fails to pay a penalty. In effect, the DOT would become the lead federal agency for cruise ship consumer protection, not unlike the role it plays in aviation consumer protection. The bill would also give the federal government the authority to investigate consumer complaints. The cruise lines say that they are reviewing the bill. Passengers are, too. “It’s definitely headed in the right direction,” says Rob Qualls, who runs a diagnostic sensors equipment company in Indianapolis. He believes that the bill puts some much-needed accountability on an industry that has operated outside the law for too long. The plain-English passenger contract alone makes it worthwhile, because it will notify passengers of their rights — something they often don’t know. Whether the cruise industry’s lobbyists manage to defeat the Cruise Passenger Protection Act or not, we can be grateful that, however briefly, a legislative spotlight has illuminated what some say is one of the least understood, if not the least regulated, sectors of the travel industry. **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide

Hearing offers reassuring testimony on North American cruise ship industry

Glasses and wine bottles crashed to the floor in pieces, the lights went dark, passengers screamed and the Costa Concordia began to list against the rock into which it had plowed. Then emergency lights came on, waiters began serving dinner plates and people were told everything was under control — it was no more than a simple generator failure. The surreal last hours aboard the doomed Italian cruise ship — a swirl of confusion, bad information, clueless and panicking crew members — were described in detail Wednesday by a Massachusetts couple who survived the ordeal. Through it all, from the jarring crash that disrupted their dinner until their lifeboat narrowly escaped, Divya and Sameer Sharma said they never heard a word from the ship’s captain, received helpful instructions from any crew member or were told the truth about what had happened. Theirs was a vivid description of the Jan. 13 accident in which a showboating captain ran his 952-foot ship onto the rocks 300 yards off the coast of an Italian island and left an inept crew and bewildered passengers to fend for themselves in the dark as the vessel began to roll onto its side. Twenty-five people died and seven remain missing. The hearing before the House maritime subcommittee was primarily geared toward reassuring testimony that the $35 billion North American cruise ship industry is the safest on earth. “There was nothing wrong with the ship. This was a very good ship. There is nothing wrong with our ships,” said Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), a former tugboat captain on the Yukon River. Committee members and most of the testimony laid the blame squarely on the captain, Francesco Schettino, who took the ship five miles off course and abandoned it before all the passengers and crew had escaped. Testimony from a U.S. Coast Guard admiral, cruise industry lobbyists, a maritime union, a cruise ship captain and cruise line officials all agreed that cruise ships of all nations operating out of U.S. ports are better inspected, that crews are better trained and that much more rigid guidelines prepare passengers for emergencies that may require them to abandon ship. “We have the most rigorous examination process in the world,” said Coast Guard Vice Adm. Brian M. Salerno. “This is a safe industry, objectively speaking.” Committee members and industry officials said the sinking of the Costa Concordia, owned by a subsidiary of Miami-based cruise operator Carnival, has prompted a review and upgrading of cruise line safety programs. But even as lawmakers heard testimony, another ship owned by Costa Cruises, the Costa Allegra, was being towed to port in the Indian Ocean after suffering a fire and losing power this week. The Sharmas told the committee that they received no safety instructions when they boarded and that they stumbled upon their life jackets by accident when hanging up clothes in their cabin locker before heading to dinner. “As we had just ordered our appetizers, there was a violent shaking of the ship followed by loud crash noises as the plates and glasses broke due to the listing of the ship,” Divya Sharma said. The lights went out and “everyone nearby started to scream.” When emergency lights came on, there was an announcement that everything was under control, she said, “and the staff began bringing out everyone’s food as if nothing bad had happened.” When the Sharmas saw some dining room crew begin to panic and cry, they returned to their cabin and stumbled around in the darkness to get their life jackets. Divya Sharma does not know how to swim. Another announcement urged calm, said the problem was under control and to await instructions, but “there was a sense of panic in the announcer’s voice,” Divya Sharma said. “The reason that the announcements were made on ‘behalf’ of the captain is because the captain wasn’t there.” A state room attendant snapped at them to stay in their cabin, but they made their way to the lifeboat deck. Although it was almost an hour after the accident, they were ordered back to their cabin. “People started to panic and get frustrated as the ship was tilting more,” Divya Sharma said. They said that they rushed into a lifeboat and then were ordered out because it was overcrowded but that they held their places. When the boat reached the water, its engine belched blue smoke and ran in circles. As it puttered ineffectively, the listing ship appeared about to topple and crush them. People began to panic, but finally the lifeboat inched clear. “We trusted the crew members and this captain with our lives,” Divya Sharma said. “No one deserves to die on their vacation.”

Safeguarding America’s seaports from terrorism

The Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks revealed vulnerabilities not just in aviation security, but in all modes of transportation, including the shipping ports that handle more than 90 percent of the nation’s imported goods. In the absence of a comprehensive plan to protect harbor facilities, Anthony Regalbuto set up and began to run an ambitious and sophisticated program to address many of the major port security weaknesses in the United States and assist foreign nations in adopting new anti-terrorism measures. In the past three years alone, Regalbuto, chief of the Coast Guard’s Office of International and Domestic Port Security, has managed hundreds of domestic and foreign assessments of critical domestic and international maritime facilities and infrastructure, helping these seaports guard against potential terror attacks, protect the public and ensure the smooth flow of international trade. “He’s our port security czar,” said Capt. Mikeal Staier, chief of the Coast Guard’s domestic port security evaluations. “When they talk about securing our borders, it begins overseas and at our ports,” Staier said. “Tony started all that. He was the impetus for getting that off the ground.” The risks at ports are numerous. Someone could tamper with a shipping container, leave something dangerous on a dock, hop aboard a U.S.-bound vessel with intent to do harm or smuggle in a weapon of mass destruction. Regalbuto determines whether countries are following international requirements for port security and access control, and works with them to make improvements. On the domestic side, he has analyzed security risks at the local, regional and national levels and pushed for changes. “It’s a daunting, overwhelming task when you look at the U.S. from a security standpoint and how to make sense of that,” said Mike Brown, who works on the Coast Guard’s international security evaluations. The security precautions at the seaports are just part of a layered approach taken by the Coast Guard, one that includes vessel and cargo screening protocols, enforcing notice of arrival requirements and leveraging intelligence and information resources from across the government. The Maritime Security Risk Analysis Model, which Regalbuto helped develop for evaluations, has been used by the Coast Guard to analyze more than 30,000 potential targets and 100,000 attack scenarios nationwide. It gauges three components: the threat of attack, the vulnerability of the target and the consequences of a successful attack. For instance, it looks at whether a particular port facility is handling dangerous cargos, what damage a fire or explosion might do and how many people’s lives might be at risk. Since 2002, the data from this risk analysis model has been used to distribute more than $2.7 billion in grants for port security, directing investments to where they would have the biggest impact on strengthening security and driving down risks. Of course, tradeoffs have to be made when weighing costs and benefits. With his broad experience and knowledge, Regalbuto has been successful at building consensus on how to make intelligent choices, according to Brown. “He’s been very, very good at that, helping inform those decisions,” Brown said. “He has the vision on the domestic side to sort out many targets so it’s manageable and make effective and efficient use of resources.” On the international front, Regalbuto realized that some foreign countries needed legislation in order to move ahead with safeguarding their ports, so he had a model code drafted to build their capacity. Many countries want to meet the basic requirements so the U.S. will not hold up ships by imposing conditions of entry on a vessel. These conditions typically lead to costly delays, and ships could end up bypassing those ports, causing economic harm. The model code provides guidelines that nations can use to strengthen deficiencies in their legal systems so they can enhance port security and do business with the United States more easily. He hopes the United Nations body responsible for maritime safety will also adopt it, according to Brown. “It was his idea,” Brown said. ”He’s the one who identified the problem and sought and reprioritized resources within the Coast Guard’s international program to have this model code, these guidelines drafted.” Capt. Jonathan Burton, director of Coast Guard Inspections and Compliance, said part of Regalbuto’s success is that he is “a great people manager and a great process manager.” He is extremely good at international diplomacy, while also managing the domestic side and a diverse set of employees, both military and civilian, Burton said. Staier added Regalbuto has “changed the landscape for all of us because we have grown to know where the vulnerabilities are, where the risks are and where we need to spend our money.” “It’s really just a testament to Tony’s vision and leadership in the port security world,” he said. _This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to the Fed Page of The Washington Post to read about other federal workers who are making a difference. To recommend a Federal Player of the Week, contact us at fedplayers@ourpublicservice.org._

Are cruise lines doing enough to protect their passengers?

Pat Busovicki’s Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Dream almost ended in a nightmare. One afternoon, after plummeting down its Twister water slide, she says, she found herself trapped in a dangerous undertow. “I couldn’t get out,” remembers the retired librarian from Westlake, Ohio. She says that crew members didn’t assist her, and only after her sister cried for help did another passenger jump into the water and rescue her. Busovicki, like a small but growing group of consumer advocates and passengers, believes that cruise lines aren’t doing enough to protect their customers. Despite an industry effort to regulate itself, consumer groups are asking the government for tougher rules that would ensure them safer passage. When Busovicki visited the ship’s doctor, he told her that she’d nearly drowned in the pool. The experience put a damper on the rest of her vacation, and she says that she was disappointed when Carnival didn’t try to make up for the incident. In an e-mail, Carnival said that it’s “extremely sorry” for what happened to her but insisted that it followed safety procedures similar to those for land-based water slides. “The safety and well-being of our guests are at the forefront of our mind on all cruises, with making sure that you have a fun and memorable vacation coming a close second,” the company said. Carnival offered her a $100 credit as a “gesture of goodwill.” A Carnival representative reviewed Busovicki’s claim after she contacted me and said that the firm had handled her case by the book. Not only are its shipboard slides designed with safety in mind, the representative said, but an undertow is unlikely, since the landing trough is a flattened-out, shallow extension of the slide, with at least four team members staffing the area at all times. “She was treated with care and compassion both from our medical team and our guest services staff, and a full examination of what she reported was conducted,” said Carnival spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz. “The guest services team followed up with her several times and had an in-person meeting with her so that she could share her concerns, according to the ship’s notes.” The cruise industry claims that trips are safe, despite congressional hearings and passenger accounts that have suggested otherwise. In an attempt to preempt government regulation, the industry adopted a “passenger bill of rights” that addressed some of the most common cruise complaints. The document gave customers the right to get off a docked ship if food, water and medical care can’t adequately be provided on board; the right to a full refund for a trip that’s canceled because of mechanical failures; and the right to have full-time, professional emergency medical attention available aboard ocean cruises. But is the self-imposed bill of rights, which is now more than a year old, enough to ensure cruise passengers’ safety? Some industry watchers are doubtful. “The bill of rights didn’t give passengers any real additional rights,” says Kendall Carver, chairman of the International Cruise Victims Association. “Instead, it was a PR move.” What are cruise lines trying to avoid? A proposed law called the Cruise Passenger Protection Act. Among other things, the bill would compel cruise lines to offer customers a clear, upfront summary of the restrictive terms and conditions in cruise contracts. It would also give the federal government more authority to protect cruise ship passengers, including investigating complaints such as Busovicki’s. In addition, the proposed law would make all alleged crimes on cruise ships publicly available information. The FBI currently reports only crimes that are no longer under investigation, leaving passengers with the impression that cruises are practically crime-free. Although the industry’s effort to self-regulate slowed momentum in Congress, it didn’t stall the proposed law entirely. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who’s chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, is trying to incorporate parts of the bill’s language into an upcoming Coast Guard reauthorization bill. That follows a Senate hearing this summer in which passengers testified about the lack of consumer protections. The Cruise Passenger Protection Act is necessary to “level the playing field” for passengers, according to Edward Bassett Jr., a Boston attorney who specializes in transportation policy. He notes that some of the laws that apply to cruise ships are more than a century old and were passed to encourage shipbuilding rather than consumer protection. “In the past, the courts have liberally construed these statutes in the ship owner’s favor,” he says. “New legislation is needed to give passengers from this country meaningful legal rights which can be enforced here in the United States.” The cruise industry disagrees. “The Cruise Passenger Protection Act is a solution in search of a problem that punitively singles out the cruise industry, needlessly creates a new federal bureaucracy at taxpayer expense, and will likely increase the cost to consumers in taking a cruise,” says Michael McGarry, a spokesman for the Cruise Lines International Association. Although it can sometimes be a challenge to separate rhetoric from reality on this issue, there are practical takeaways for anyone planning a cruise this fall. Consider an insurance policy with a medical evacuation benefit, so that if you fall ill, you can return to the States quickly. Medical care aboard ships, despite claims to the contrary, is not always up to American standards. Take a camera and use it to collect evidence if there’s an incident on board. Cruise lines may videotape common areas, but if there’s an incident, they won’t give you the footage, says Jack Hickey, a maritime lawyer based in Miami. “Get the full names, addresses, e-mail addresses and cell numbers of all witnesses.” For now, government regulators may be powerless to mediate matters such as customer satisfaction, billing issues or itinerary changes, but that isn’t stopping them from trying. The Federal Maritime Commission’s little-known Cruise Passenger Assistance program can contact a cruise line on the passenger’s behalf and facilitate “a discussion” of the problem at 866-448-9546 or by e-mail at complaints@fmc.   gov. And, of course, a competent travel agent can help if you have a customer- service problem. Until the proposed laws are enacted — if indeed they ever are — it’s best to take the same precautions you would on a land-based resort vacation. E-mail Christopher Elliott at  chris@elliott.org . **More fromTravel:** Some cruise lines take a hard stance on refunds, even when a relative dies Norovirus outbreaks make both cruise lines and passengers leery When flooding turns your river cruise into a bus cruise, what are your options?

Carnival Triumph: The experts weigh in

After a harrowing and unhygienic five days of floating in the Gulf of Mexico without power or flushing toilets, the Carnival Triumph finally managed to drag her sorry stern back to port in Mobile, Ala., a little over a week ago The last time the same sort of mishap — an engine-room fire — occurred was in 2010 on another Carnival ship, the Splendor. The next time this happens. . . . Well, will there be a next time? For perspective on the situation, the Travel section contacted two cruise industry experts: Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor at Cruise Critic, and Jay Herring, author of “The Truth About Cruise Ships” and a former senior officer with Carnival Cruises. **How common are engine room fires and other meltdowns on cruise ships?** **Herring:** Cruising is very safe. These incidents are very rare — maybe once a year, once every couple of years. You’re more likely to be hurt driving to the cruise ship terminal than are you actually being on a cruise. **Brown:** Engine room fires happen, but 99 percent of the time passengers aren’t affected. **Is Carnival to blame?** **Herring:** It could happen anywhere. Any ship at sea is at risk for a mishap. **How serious was the situation?** **Herring:** On a scale of 1 to 10, Costa was a 10. [Last year’s Costa Concordia accident in Italy caused 32 deaths.] This is a 5 or 6. **Did Carnival handle the disaster well?** **Brown:** This is a textbook case of how not to react. Nothing about the handling of the situation seemed well done. **Any heroes deserve a mention?** **Brown:** The crew kept everyone safe. The cruise line had better be generous to the crew. **********Do you think Carnival’s compensation package — reimbursement for the trip, credit twoard a future cruise and $500 — is fair?** **Herring:** I think the compensation is more than adequate. **Will this event affect future bookings?** **Brown:** Not only virgins [newbie cruisers] but people who have cruised before are skittish. It’s a challenge to get past it. But if we can get past Costa, we can get past this. **Any advice for people now nervous about cruising?** **Brown:** Any ship designed after 2010 must have two engine rooms. If you have any concern, go for a ship that has this new feature. **Would you still sail Carnival?** **Brown:** I would take Carnival tomorrow. This was an aberration. **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide

GAO says there is no evidence that a TSA program to spot terrorists is effective

A federal review concludes there’s no solid evidence that airport checkpoint personnel have a clue when they scan the approaching line for suspicious passengers. In a report to be presented to a House subcommittee Thursday, the Government Accountability Office says there is no evidence that it’s effective for Transportation Security Administration officers to scan crowds for telltale signs someone might be a terrorist. Critics have suggested that the stress and exhaustion that often accompany air travel are too easily misread as suspicious behavior. The GAO report recommends that Congress stop funding for the program, which has cost more than $878 million since its launch in 2007. TSA Administrator John S. Pistole is scheduled to join the GAO’s Stephen M. Lord in testimony before the committee Thursday. While the program predates Pistole’s appointment to head the agency, its mission is consistent with his drive toward a risk-based system rather than one in which all passengers receive the same treatment, regardless of the risk they appear to pose. Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), chairman of the subcommittee on transportation security, called the hearing “a timely opportunity to review whether this program and others are an effective and efficient use of resources.” Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), the top-ranking Democrat on the Committee on Homeland Security, said the GAO report confirmed that the program “is fundamentally flawed, cannot be proven effective, and should no longer be funded with taxpayer dollars.” The TSA defended the program Wednesday. “Behavior detection is vital to TSA’s layered approach to deter, detect, and disrupt individuals who pose a threat to aviation,” the TSA said in statement responding to the report. “Looking for suspicious behavior is a common sense approach used by law enforcement and security personnel across the country and the world.” The Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program employs 2,800 TSA personnel. “TSA has not demonstrated that [behavior-detection officers] can consistently interpret the SPOT behavioral indicators,” the GAO report says. “The subjectivity of the SPOT behavioral indicators and variation in BDO referral rates raise questions about the continued use of behavior indicators for detecting passengers who might pose a risk to aviation security.” The GAO recommends that funding be “directed to programs that have demonstrated their effectiveness.” “We completely support defunding it,” said Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, who wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in June urging an end to SPOT. “It’s discriminatory in nature and terribly ineffective,” Berry said. “It’s used to target people who are perceived to be Arab Americans. We have a deep history and understanding of how this program works, and that is related to experience that Americans of Arab descent have when they travel to Israel.” The watchdog group Judicial Watch, which has criticized the TSA and Department of Homeland Security as virtually dysfunctional, agreed with the GAO recommendation. “The TSA continues to treat all fliers as a potential threat,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “They’re just looking at behavior and not looking into other things, like travel patterns. They’re not focused on what they ought to be focused on.” Behavior-detection officers work in pairs at airport checkpoints, using an evaluation system of behaviors that suggest that someone should be scrutinized. The TSA workers may ask a police officer to talk with the passenger. If that doesn’t resolve the concerns, the person may not be permitted to pass through to the boarding area. During a one-year period ending in September 2012, TSA records show that 37,370 passengers were targeted under the SPOT program, 2,214 were referred to a police officer and 199 were arrested. The TSA screens about 1.8 million passengers a day at 450 U.S. airports. Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (La.), the top-ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, called the GAO report “a serious indictment” of the SPOT program. “With a single report, GAO has displayed that the science behind the program is nonexistent and that the study TSA cites in defending the program was fundamentally flawed,” Richmond said. “Given TSA’s unwillingness to concur with GAO’s recommendation that the agency limit funding for the program until it could be proven, it is now up to Congress to take a hard look at reprioritizing the funding for this program.”

Report lists ‘high risks’ needing Trump’s attention

Gene Dodaro enjoys rare status. He’s a general but doesn’t wear a uniform. As the comptroller general of the United States, Dodaro is one of the few top government officials whose work is routinely praised by both parties in Congress.  GAO reports are welcome on the Hill, because they give elected officials lots of information for their oversight of federal agencies. Politicians can use that to breathlessly bash their favorite bureaucratic targets with over-the-top oratory that contrasts sharply with GAO’s boring, objective style. Every two years, at the beginning of a congressional term, GAO provides something for everyone in Congress. It’s the high-risk list that covers serious issues with programs all across the government. This year’s list is almost 700 pages long and is scheduled for release at House and Senate hearings on Wednesday. Much of it is deadly dull but important, nonetheless. Here’s a look. First the good news. “Since GAO’s last high-risk update, many of the 32 high-risk areas on the 2015 list have shown solid progress,” the 2017 report says. “Twenty-three high-risk areas, or two-thirds of all the areas, have met or partially met all five criteria for removal from the High-Risk List.” But that’s not the only way to view it.  Once an agency gets on the list, it’s not easy to get off. GAO looks at five criteria: leadership commitment, agency capacity, an action plan, monitoring efforts and demonstrated progress. GAO’s prescription for agency success: “Perseverance by the executive branch in implementing GAO’s recommended solutions and continued oversight and action by Congress are essential to achieving greater progress.”  Terrorism is a high priority, and GAO has encouraging information on that front. Managing terrorism-related information is the only area removed from the list since 2015. “Significant progress had been made to strengthen how intelligence on terrorism, homeland security, and law enforcement is shared among federal, state, local, tribal, international, and private sector partners,” according to GAO. Health care for veterans was added to the list in 2015, and it remains an area needing “substantive attention,” GAO said. The Department of Veterans Affairs developed an action plan to address problems, but GAO found the plan has “overly ambitious deadlines for completion,” and lacks a thorough analysis of the issues, clear metrics to gauge progress and the resources needed for success. GAO’s list now has 34 items, including these three new areas: Johnson said the 2020 Census could cost as much as $17.8 billion. “At that price, the Census would cost $124 per household to administer, compared to just $16 per household in 1970 in inflation-adjusted terms,” he said. “This is inexplicable; it should be getting cheaper to count our population in the digital age, not more expensive.”

Turning Carnival’s ship around

It’s been anything but smooth sailing for the managers of Carnival Cruise Lines recently. Barely a month after what came to be called the “cruise from hell,” in which its Triumph vessel caught fire and was stranded in the Gulf of Mexico, no less than three more of the company’s ships have been in the headlines for technical difficulties in the last week. News reports Friday said that the Carnival ship Legend is experiencing issues that are affecting the vessel’s speed. That followed reports that the Carnival Dream had a malfunction with its emergency generator and had interruptions to the ship’s elevators and restrooms, prompting the cruise line to fly the ship’s 4,000 passengers home instead. And last Saturday, its ship Elation received a tug boat escort down the Mississippi River following problems with its steering system. The more recent episodes are relatively minor in comparison — the Elation’s tug boat escort was a precautionary measure, the cruise line said, and only one restroom was temporarily closed due to a toilet overflowing on the Dream. Some customers seemed unfazed by the problems. And the company’s decision to fly the Dream passengers home, rather than have “guests on board without an operational back-up emergency generator,” as a Carnival spokesperson told USA Today, seems like a wise and prudent move in the aftermath of the Triumph debacle. Still, whatever the cruise line does in response to the recent headlines, the combined impact of all these incidents could still be big. That’s because, when it comes to damage control, there are few things more likely to attract negative attention (other than rumors of human waste on the floor of a cruise ship) than fears that a similar episode could happen again. Fixing a single PR headache — even one that involves overflowing toilets and stranded cruise ships — is fairly straightforward. Apologize, quickly, and provide restitution for those affected. Opinion is mixed on how well Carnival handled the Triumph fiasco. Some experts give the company credit for its communication efforts, while others critiqued its apparent attempt at Twitter satire and the CEO’s untimely appearance at a basketball game. Still, whatever the blow to the brand’s image, people have short memories, and customers who weren’t on board a smelly ship may very well have forgetten the episode as quickly as the media did. But having Carnival’s name appear in the headlines again just weeks later, even for lesser issues, is more complex to address. The company’s leaders will have to deal with questions about their management. (Carnival’s CEO said the company has begun a comprehensive review of its entire fleet.) It will have to answer government officials, such as Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the commerce, science and transportation committee, who sent a letter to the company on Thursday. And it will be looking for the best way to respond as it becomes the subject of another round of snarky quips on Twitter. (“If you are really hating your job today,” wrote Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter, “i leave you w/ this: You could be working for Carnival Cruiselines. #glasshalffull.”) In the days to come, communications consultants, cruise industry experts and business school professors are sure to offer plenty of advice. The cruise line should be proactive about putting the recent incidents into context, they’re likely to say. It will need to communicate transparently about the new headlines with customers who have upcoming cruises booked. And the industry may want to advertise about the safety of cruising in general. But all of that will do little if another story pops up in the coming weeks about more cruise ship technical problems, however minor they may be. That, of course, is difficult to control. But to borrow a phrase from medicine, the first rule for leaders dealing with crises is pretty simple. First, do no (more) harm. **Like On Leadership? Follow us onFacebook and Twitter.**

Can we trust the cruise lines’ new passenger bill of rights?

Maybe it was the string of customer-service disasters, starting with the Costa Concordia tragedy last year and leading up to the recent Carnival Triumph “poop” cruise, on which passengers were left adrift in the Gulf of Mexico for five days without working toilets. Maybe it was the threat of government regulation from Sen. Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.), a vocal critic of the cruise industry, that made it move. Then again, maybe we should just take the cruise industry at its word on its decision, announced just before the Memorial Day holiday, to introduce a passenger “bill of rights.” But here’s what we have: a promise by the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) to add a list of “rights” to its ticket contracts, the legal agreement between passengers and the cruise line. These include the right to leave a docked ship if it can’t provide essentials such as food, water, bathroom facilities and medical care; the right to a full refund for a trip canceled because of mechanical failures, or a partial refund if a trip is cut short for the same reason; and the right to timely updates about any changes in a ship’s itinerary caused by a mechanical failure or an emergency. None of these rights are new. Instead, they codify “many longstanding practices of CLIA,” according to Christine Duffy, the organization’s chief executive. “The cruise industry is committed to continuing to deliver against the high standards we set for ourselves in all areas of shipboard operations,” she adds. But would the bill have affected the outcome of any recent customer-service meltdowns, including the Triumph fiasco, or even the latest disaster, a fire that cut short a sailing on Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas last month? Stewart Chiron, a Miami travel agent who’s known for his pro-industry views, says that the answer is “no.” Rather, he thinks that the reason for the bill is political. Late last year, CLIA merged with several trade groups, including the European Cruise Council, the Asia Cruise Association and the Passenger Shipping Association, and is just taking the new organization on a “test drive” with this bill. “It made sense to quickly agree on a consistent cruise passenger bill of rights,” he says. Perhaps too quickly. Although CLIA representatives claim that they collaborated closely with Schumer on the bill, the senator appeared to be caught off guard by the sudden announcement, made at a time when no one was likely to pay attention to it. In a letter to CLIA, Schumer pressed the association for specifics on its new pledge. Who determines that essential provisions such as food and water can’t be provided? What exactly are the cruise lines’ current reimbursement practices? How will passengers be notified of changes to their itinerary? Schumer has called the bill “a step in the right direction” but has stopped short of endorsing it. “I still have many remaining questions, both on the content and how the bill of rights will be enforced,” he told the Associated Press. A CLIA representative said that the organization will answer him “soon.” Passengers are skeptical, too. Some say that they’d prefer deeds to words when it comes to passenger protections. “If the cruise lines had any brains, they’d forgo some of their billions of profits yearly for their good name and get their guys trained in damage control,” says Richard Johnson, a retired naval officer who lives in Cedar Hill, Tex. “And firefighting.” To others, the existing passenger contract is something of a joke, and adding passenger rights language is little more than a punch line. Bruce Helenbart, an engineer from Hazelwood, Mo., says that he recently had to wade through a 20-page cruise ticket contract and sign it before setting sail. It included disclaimers stating that the cruise line wasn’t responsible for the ship’s doctor, provisions limiting Helenbart’s ability to sue the cruise line, and a clause that allowed the company to alter the itinerary any way it chose to. What’s more, the agreement was what’s known as an “adhesion” contract — a one-way agreement that bound him. If he didn’t sign it, he couldn’t board. “It’s all there except about the volunteering to be turned into a manipede,” he says. James Walker, a maritime attorney based in Miami, says that customers are correct to disbelieve the cruise industry’s new customer-service rhetoric. “It’s actually a step in the wrong direction,” he told me. “What this bill of rights does, in fact, is limit the liability of cruise lines.” For example, if this bill had been in effect during the Triumph disaster, then Carnival would have been obligated only to refund part of the passengers’ payment — not to repay the cost of the entire cruise, cover passengers’ transportation expenses, zero out their onboard bills, issue a voucher for a future cruise and pay them $500 each, as Carnival did, he says. “I would view this as a PR move that effectively limits the rights of passengers,” he adds. “They are proposing rights that are beneficial to the cruise lines, but not to their customers.” The cruise industry needs the positive publicity that would probably come from an uncritical industry press. But more importantly, says Walker, it hopes to keep likely legislation by Schumer, which would have the force of law, from ever reaching the Senate floor. Bill or no bill, the fact remains that you’re still giving up a lot of rights when you sign up for a cruise. Maybe too many. The only way to avoid that — at least for the foreseeable future — is to stay on dry land. **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide

Senator: Va. Tech student who fell from cruise ship didn’t have to die

After the U.S. Coast Guard called off the search for a Virginia Tech senior who fell from a Carnival cruise ship this weekend, a U.S. senator said Cameron Smook didn’t have to die. Smook had boarded the Carnival Glory with friends Saturday, and on Sunday the company informed the family that he was missing at sea, the family wrote in a public statement to the Virginia Tech community after learning that the extensive air and sea search had ended. _Read more about Cameron Smook here._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a statement, “Today, as our thoughts and prayers with the family and friends of Cameron Smook, the stark tragic fact is that readily available life-saving technology could have spared him.” He added: A spokeswoman for Carnival Cruise Lines forwarded a request for a response to Blumenthal to the Cruise Lines International Association, which speaks for the industry as a whole. The industry group issued a statement, which said safety of passengers and crew are a top priority, and said: “Our thoughts are with the family of the young man who is missing. “While incidents of man overboard in the cruise industry are rare, and typically found to be the result of an intentional or reckless act, cruise lines take a number of steps to help prevent such situations. These include mandatory railing heights, well-trained personnel, and video cameras.” It cited statistics from a maritime research and analysis firm in London that overboard incidents have declined by 50 percent from 2009 to 2013, and that year there were 13 people who fell overboard out of 21 million passengers. “Current law requires cruise lines to integrate technology that can be used for capturing images of passengers or detecting passengers who have gone overboard, to the extent such technology is available,” the statement said. “To date, no man-overboard detection system has shown to perform reliably enough for wide-scale deployment.  The industry does continue to assess, develop and trial such technologies in collaboration with maritime authorities.” Smook, who had expected to graduate in May with a degree in mining and mineral engineering, was warmly remembered by faculty members for “his energy, his spirit, and his ability to make others laugh,” according to a release from the university:

Constantine Sarkos: Leading the FAA’s effort to reduce airliner fire hazards

For more than four decades, Constantine (Gus) Sarkos has played a pivotal role in reducing fire hazards aboard commercial aircraft, taking critical steps to improve cabin and cargo safety. As head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Fire Safety Branch, Sarkos leads a team of more than two dozen professionals who test materials and measure the effectiveness of fire detection and suppression systems. During his tenure at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center near Atlantic City, N.J., Sarkos has participated in or overseen the development of such aircraft fire safety improvements as new fire-blocking layers for seats, low-heat and smoke-release cabin panels, floor proximity lighting and heat-resistant evacuation slides. Sarkos also has been involved in mandating the use of burn-resistant cargo liners, new Halon extinguishers, cargo compartment fire detection and suppression systems, in-flight fire resistant thermal acoustic insulation and new fuel tank systems. “In the past, there were many accidents and more fire fatalities than we have now,” said Sarkos. “Accident rates have gone down significantly and because of the fire safety improvements that we have made, the chances of surviving an accident are much higher.” Sarkos said that he and his staff use the most extensive civil aircraft fire test facilities in the world to replicate the full range of accident and environmental conditions that occur during post-crash and in-flight fires. The scope of testing varies from setting fires and examining the impact on a full-scale, 130-foot-long, wide-body airplane fuselage to examining milligram samples of advanced polymers. The FAA’s goal, Sarkos said, is to minimize the likelihood of a fire at any location throughout the aircraft. But if a fire occurs in-flight, the objective is to reliably detect, extinguish or suppress it until the aircraft can be landed safely. In the case of a post-crash fire, Sarkos said, the goal is to have materials that burn more slowly so passengers will have more time to escape. Sarkos said the work of his team came into play in the summer of 2013 when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed while landing at San Francisco’s airport. Three people were killed, but more than 300 survived the crash. The plane clipped a seawall just short of the runway, spun violently for 330 degrees, broke into pieces and caught fire. Although the fire spread in the cabin, Sarkos said it was “slow in developing due in part to the fire resistant material and, as a result, people had the time to evacuate.” Some of the FAA’s work stems from investigations that have followed airline accidents and fires. Other improvements have come from initiatives taken by Sarkos and his staff. The FAA can mandate changes, but works with industry to implement new fire safety standards on a voluntarily basis when possible. “Industry customers must implement the products of our research into the design or operation of aircraft, and our challenge is to develop practical and cost-effective solutions,” said Sarkos. “Ideally, this should be done proactively and not be driven by accidents.” Sarkos said it is critical not to be complacent about the need for research and improvements to “ensure we maintain the excellent fire-safe aviation system in the face of today’s concerns—new fire threats, new technology and environmental constraints.” Most recently, Sarkos and his staff have been working on reducing the chances of fires from lithium metal batteries, which are used in electronic devices. As a result of the work by Sarkos and his team, the FAA does not allow lithium metal batteries to be shipped in the cargo holds of passenger jets. It also has issued standards for air-cargo shipments, including packaging requirements and safeguards for power cells that have been damaged or are headed for recycling. Sarkos said his team also is examining a variety of new fire threats, including those posed by the lighter and potentially flammable materials now being used in airplanes. Eric Neiderman, the manager of the FAA’s aviation research division, said Sarkos is passionate about his work and operates like the coach of a team, motivating his staff, providing his expertise and laying the groundwork for many innovations. “He is one of those people who knows it all, but is not a know-it-all,” said Neiderman. “He has an incredible wealth of knowledge and he has really advanced the field.” Sarkos said his work is “challenging and a source of pride because we see the products of the research being used to increase safety.” “The worst thing I ever had to do was meet with relatives of accident victims,” he said. “It is a terrible thing to see a parent of someone killed in an aircraft accident, and I am glad that in recent years that the record has improved because of the work we are doing. We must work to maintain that high standard.” _This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to the Fed Page of The Washington Post to read about other federal workers who are making a difference. To recommend a Federal Player of the Week, contact us at fedplayers@ourpublicservice.org._

The government’s top workers, Group 4

The annual “Sammie” awards, handed out in the fall by the Partnership for Public Service, honor federal employees for their accomplishments. The Post is profiling the 30 finalists. The nonprofit partnership provided the names and descriptions. **Constantine P. Sarkos** _Federal Aviation Administration_ Brought about major fire-safety improvements for in-flight blazes and crash landings As head of the FAA’s Fire Safety Branch, Sarkos and his team have played a pivotal role in improving cabin and cargo safety in ways that have decreased the risk of injuries to airline passengers and saved lives. His work testing materials and measuring the effectiveness of fire-detection and suppression systems has prompted more than a dozen significant changes to U.S. and foreign aircraft during the past three decades. These changes were designed to stop fires and curtail the spread of blazes occurring in-flight or during crash landings. Sarkos and his team have examined fire threats posed by lighter and potentially flammable materials now being used in airplanes and by the combustibility of large quantities of lithium batteries carried in cargo holds. As a result of his team’s work, the Department of Transportation no longer allows non-rechargeable metal lithium batteries in the cargo holds of passenger jets. In addition, a number of U.S. airlines announced they will no longer accept rechargeable ion lithium batteries because of tests done by Sarkos and his team showing that a buildup of gases inside bulk containers can lead to explosions and violent fires. **Kevin G. Stricklin** _Mine Safety and Health Administration_ Improved coal mine safety and reduced deadly accidents to the lowest number in history When disaster strikes in America’s coal mines, Stricklin and his team race to the scene to lead dangerous rescue and recovery operations, calling on years of training and experience, and at times devising creative solutions in the midst of the crisis. On a day-to-day basis, Stricklin — the administrator for coal mine safety and health — and his colleagues are working to enforce safety rules and improve industry compliance to prevent deadly accidents from occurring in the first place. During the past several years, Stricklin has been on the front lines leading the agency’s efforts to step up enforcement, work that is proving effective. The number of coal miners who died in accidents last year was the lowest ever recorded in U.S. history, while the number of chronic violators of coal-mine regulations decreased even as MSHA, a part of the Department of Labor, ramped up inspections. MSHA increased its enforcement after the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia, when 29 of 31 coal miners were killed following an explosion of methane gas fed by excessive coal dust. The mine had a long list of flagrant safety violations. **John P. Wagner** _U.S. Customs and Border Protection_ Reduced wait times for Americans and a growing number of foreign travelers arriving at U.S. airports CBP was at a crossroads, facing the need for heightened security while grappling with a big increase in the number of international airline travelers, long wait times for arriving passengers, and a surge in missed flight connections. Wagner, now a deputy assistant CBP commissioner, conceived of and put in place two programs that fundamentally improved the international-arrivals process for returning Americans and foreign travelers visiting the U.S. One initiative launched in 2008, known as the Global Entry Trusted Traveler program, has enrolled more than 2 million individuals, is offered at 42 U.S. airports and 12 pre-clearance locations, and has cut down long wait times for arriving passengers to a matter of minutes. A second program introduced in 2013 called Automated Passport Control is now in place at 34 airports and has reduced wait times by as much as 40 percent for passengers arriving from abroad at a number of major airports. “No one has been more responsible for the transformation of the international air arrival process than John Wagner,” said CBP Deputy Commissioner Kevin McAleenan.

National digest: E-cigarettes making more children sick

Electronic cigarettes have sickened rising numbers of young children, a study of U.S. poison-center calls has found. Most cases involve swallowing liquid nicotine. While most children weren’t seriously harmed, one died and several had severe complications, including comas and seizures. “This is an epidemic by any definition,” said lead author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. The researchers say the results highlight a need for better parent awareness about the importance of keeping the devices out of sight and reach of young children. They also recommend stricter regulations and applauded long-awaited restrictions the Food and Drug Administration issued on Thursday. The study examined poison center calls about exposure to nicotine and tobacco products among children younger than 6 from January 2012 through April 2015. The most worrisome findings involved e-cigarettes — battery-powered devices that turn nicotine into an inhalable vapor. Some feature colorful packaging and flavored nicotine that can attract young children. The results were published Mondayin the journal Pediatrics. The FDA rules issued last week will require federal review of the devices and their ingredients, imposing restrictions similar to those affecting traditional cigarettes. The agency intends to issue rules to require nicotine exposure warnings and child-resistant packaging. That action would supplement the Child Nicotine Poisoning Prevention law, which takes effect this summer and will require child-resistant packaging of liquid nicotine containers. **— Associated Press** Federal health officials said passengers aboard the first cruise ship to dock in Portland, Maine, this season may have norovirus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 27 percent of the passengers aboard the Balmoral, operated by Fred Olsen Cruise Lines, have gotten sick since the cruise began April 16. The CDC reported that 252 of the 919 passengers on the Balmoral have fallen ill, as well as eight members of the 502-member crew. Symptoms of norovirus include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The CDC said the ship has increased its cleaning and disinfection procedures. Two CDC health officers and an epidemiologist boarded the ship during its stop in Baltimore, last week. Mayor Ethan Strimling told the Portland Press Herald that he learned about the outbreak just before boarding the ship for a tour on Sunday morning. “I could see there were people wiping things down constantly,” he said. “We got onto the elevators and they wiped the elevators down.” The Balmoral set out from Southampton, England, on April 16 and is due to return May 20. Fred Olsen Cruise Lines did not immediately return a request for comment. **— Associated Press** A California student was embarrassed and distressed after a picture of her wearing an Islamic headscarf, or hijab, appeared in her high school yearbook with the false name “Isis Phillips,” a Muslim advocacy group said Sunday. The senior at Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga and her parents were “embarrassed after seeing the picture in the yearbook and have suffered a great deal of emotional and psychological distress,” according to an emailed statement by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. The school’s principal has apologized for what she described as a “misprint,” and CAIR said its legal team would meet on Monday with the family and school officials and seek an investigation of the incident, a spokesman told Reuters. ISIS is one way to refer to the Islamic State, the militant group that has seized large areas of Iraq and Syria and claimed responsibility for bombings in Europe. The United Nations defines the Islamic State as a terrorist group. A student who worked on the yearbook said the printing of the wrong name was a mistake and that a student named Isis Phillips had transferred from the school earlier in the year, according to a report in the New York Daily News. **— Reuters** **— From news services**

Zipping through airport security? TSA says 50 percent of travelers do

More than half the people passing through U.S. airports now receive preferential security treatment because they pose no clear threat to aviation safety, federal officials say. The shift has significantly reduced the lines at security checkpoints, according to the Transportation Security Administration, reflecting the goal of TSA Administrator John S. Pistole to move away from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to screening passengers. For years, the TSA faced criticism from Congress, the travel industry and fliers for giving the same scrutiny to grandmothers, toddlers, airline pilots, soldiers and other seemingly harmless passengers that it gives everyone else. When Pistole arrived at TSA four years ago after a career at the FBI, he began a shift to an intelligence-driven, risk-based approach to keeping terrorists off airplanes. Under pressure from Capitol Hill and U.S. Travel Association lobbyists, he also wanted to reduce the time passengers spent snaking through lines at security checkpoints. Recent TSA data shows Pistole’s evolution has brought wait times down significantly. Ultra-long waits of 20 minutes or more have been reduced by 64 percent, according to the agency. Those reductions have been achieved by exempting more than half of all passengers from the same level of attention that everyone received in the past. Some of the exemptions are newer than others. Members of the military, passengers under the age of 12 or over the age of 75, and civilian Defense Department workers are among those who go through special lines that don’t require shoe, belt or jacket removal, or taking laptop computers from their cases. The TSA created a program called Pre-Check that allows prequalified passengers to use the same lines, and randomly selected fliers who are not enrolled in the program are sent to those lines, too. In addition, Global Entry, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection program designed for international travelers, also provides passengers with a “trusted traveler” number that they can provide airlines when they buy tickets, allowing them to use the expedited security lines. “That’s great news that they’ve been able to reach that [50 percent] milestone,” said Courtney Temple, director of government operations at the Travel Association. “As the Pre-Check program continues to grow, there needs to be an effort to educate the public about the program, but I understand the TSA has been very proactive about that.” The TSA says it takes about 10 minutes to apply at one of the Pre-Check enrollment centers. Application requires a background check, fingerprints and an $85 fee for a five-year enrollment. A passport, required for Global Entry, is not necessary.

Navy Yard shooting is another in a long list of federal workplace violence

Another mass shooting. More workplace violence. Senseless deaths — _again_. All this in a place that brags about its “exceptionalism.” The gunshots that left at least 13 dead, including a shooter, at the Washington Navy Yard are reminders that violence in America, rather than an exception, is all too common. Many times the location has been on streets not too far from the Southeast D.C. facility. This time the killing field was a federal workplace, nondescriptly known as Building 197. It’s on a military installation that probably has more security than many other federal locations. It’s a place where many workers are trained to protect themselves and others. But that didn’t stop a shooter from gunning down the innocent. Who knows why? Whatever the reason, it’s another demonstration that even the safest places really aren’t safe. The degree of security visitors are subjected to in even low-level federal offices can be a time-consuming hassle, while giving those who work in those facilities greater security. Monday morning’s shooting undermines that sense of security. It shows that vulnerabilities are real. It indicates that security might not be tight enough. Perhaps federal employees who now pass through security with the flash of a badge also should be scanned and their bags examined, just like guests. No matter how tight the security at the Navy Yard, after Monday’s tragedy, “it’s not secure enough for me,” said Patricia Ward, a logistics management specialist there. “I’m terrified,” she told reporters. “I don’t even know if I want to come back into the building. I don’t feel safe.” The Federal Protective Service is responsible for keeping many federal buildings safe, though not the Navy Yard. Unfortunately, the Government Accountability Office has released a series of reports that are critical of the FPS and that repeatedly “have shown gaps in the security status” of federal facilities, said Mark L. Goldstein, GAO’s director of physical infrastructure. GAO has “a body of work that has shown deficiencies” in the training of FPS contract guards and in the backlog and quality of the risk assessments that FPS does for federal buildings, he said. Make no mistake, federal workplaces generally are safe places. But the Navy Yard case joins a long list of violence at federal facilities or against federal employees. News researcher Alice Crites compiled these examples: ●Two CIA employees killed and three injured on Jan. 25, 1993, outside CIA headquarters in Langley. ●●Four people killed and 23 wounded in a June 21, 1994, shooting at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, Wash. ●One hundred sixty-eight died in the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. More than 500 were injured. This was the second-deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. ●Two U.S. Capitol Police officers, John Gibson and Jacob Chestnut, were killed by a gunman in the Capitol on July 24, 1998. ●Seven U.S. Postal Service employees were shot dead by a former colleague, who then took her own life, in a Goleta, Calif., postal sorting facility on Jan. 30, 2006. ●A soldier was killed by gunfire at the Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock in June 2009. ●A security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was killed that same month by a man described as a neo-Nazi white supremacist. ●Thirteen people were killed and 43 injured during the November 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex. ●A security officer was killed and a deputy U.S. marshal wounded in a shotgun shooting at a federal courthouse in Las Vegas on Jan. 4, 2010. ●An Internal Revenue Service manager was killed in an apparent suicide attack Feb. 18, 2010, when a man flew a small plane into an Austin building that contained an IRS office. Thirteen people were injured. ●Two Pentagon officers were wounded during a gun battle with a man who died during the firefight in March 2010. ●A Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed in December 2010 near Nogales, Ariz. ●Six people died in the shooting that wounded former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 18 others during an outdoor gathering in Casas Adobes, Ariz., near Tucson. Like others on this sad roll call, the Navy Yard shooting “targeted our military and civilian personnel. These are men and women who were going to work, doing their job, protecting all of us,” President Obama said Monday. “They’re patriots, and they know the dangers of serving abroad — but today, they faced unimaginable violence that they wouldn’t have expected here at home.” Workers like Patricia Ward should not be afraid to go to work. **Twitter:@JoeDavidsonWP ** Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

Stephen Caldwell: Evaluating national security programs for Congress

Stephen Caldwell, an expert on maritime security, has been scrutinizing national security programs for Congress for more than 30 years, visiting and conducting investigations at ports in the U.S. and more than 30 other countries. “A lot of the work involves looking at the Coast Guard and at ports to see how operations are going and get a field perspective on how government is running its programs,” said Caldwell, director of Maritime Security and Coast Guard issues for the Homeland Security and Justice Team at the General Accountability Office (GAO). Producing the work that assists Congress in its oversight role involves several distinct activities, from planning investigations to going on field visits to reporting to Congress and the public on what GAO learned. “The fun part about doing this is getting out there and speaking to those officials,” Caldwell said. “In some ways, being a GAO auditor is easy. People like talking about their jobs and why they do it this way or that way.” It gets tougher, however, when the agency under scrutiny worries about what GAO will find. “There’s naturally an adversarial relationship between an agency and those who audit it,” Caldwell said. “The challenge is to try to keep an open mind and develop a relationship so they can talk candidly about their problems, but trust that you’re not going to do some kind of ‘gotcha’ audit.” Caldwell also must work with many different congressional committees with jurisdiction over maritime issues that often have competing priorities and interests, said Cathy Berrick, Caldwell’s former supervisor. “He navigates that very well, making sure he’s providing them with the information they need to have oversight,” Berrick said. “He has built up a large knowledge base that has increased the sophistication of GAO’s capability in that area.” Caldwell has been studying port security for about 10 years and views cybersecurity as an emerging area of concern. In June, his team released a report saying the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) needs to do a more thorough job of keeping ports protected from cyber intrusions and should conduct a risk assessment that “fully addresses cyber-related threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences.” Caldwell said the issue arose as a concern after a cyber attack case in Europe, in which hackers got into a system that moves containers around a seaport and used the information to smuggle drugs in and out of the port, Caldwell said. GAO found no similar cases in the U.S. but Caldwell said, “We don’t know if ports would know it happened, to be honest. There’s almost a lack of awareness” GAO recommended that the Coast Guard assess cyber-related risks as it does physical security such as security cards and gates. Berrick said Caldwell’s work also has resulted in security improvements of shipping containers that deliver materials to the U.S. and other countries. “He made a number of recommendations to strengthen container security,” she said. Berrick pointed out that the U.S. doesn’t own or regulate much of the critical infrastructure it examines; therefore it must develop relationships with owners, operators and government agencies so key people understand the state of security and how they provide better protection. In another investigation, Caldwell’s team looked at whether cruise lines were reporting crime in a timely way. Caldwell said that pressure from the report, and from senators looking into the issue, led to language in a Coast Guard authorization act for improving crime reporting. Crime statistics for cruise lines now can be found at one government website, instead of people having to contact individual cruise ship lines for the information, he said. Caldwell, who plans to retire in early January, spent 10 years in the field before starting his job at GAO’s Washington headquarters. He first worked in GAO’s European and San Francisco offices and, over the years, has worked on topics ranging from piracy and Arctic issues to supply chain, passenger vessel and energy tanker security. While he was a candidate for the Senior Executive Service, Caldwell had the opportunity to take a temporary assignment with the House Select Committee on Hurricane Katrina, which looked at preparations and response. “It was fascinating from a historical perspective,” he said. “Within 10 days of Katrina striking, I was in a Black Hawk helicopter with the National Guard, talking to the governor and officials involved in the response.” Caldwell always knew he wanted to work for the federal government on national security issues. “I didn’t know anything about GAO, but it has allowed me to do that—apply analysis to those national security issues,” he said. “What has kept me here is the variety, the people I work with and the issues I work on.” _This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference._

On a product-safety mission: An interview with CPSC leader Inez Moore Tenenbaum

_Inez Moore Tenenbaum is the chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which is responsible for protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death from thousands of consumer products. She previously served as South Carolina's state superintendent of education, and practiced health, environmental and public interest law. Tenenbaum spoke with Tom Fox, who writes the Washington Post’s Federal Coach Blog and is the director of the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Government Leadership._ **What are your biggest day-to-day challenges?** We oversee thousands of products. Many of them come from out of the country — 98 percent of the toys and a great majority of electrical products imported into the country come from China. It’s very important that we continue to have port surveillance and a risk-management system that helps us identify potentially hazardous products. If we had more staff at the ports, we could intervene more frequently and stop even more unsafe products. We have worked hard to increase our presence at the ports, but we still have limited resources compared to the other agencies. We receive tens of thousands of incident reports. We conduct thousands of investigations and stop millions of unsafe products from reaching the store shelves each year. With the resources we have, we do a great amount, but I hope that we’re not caught in these across-the-board cuts. It would take the wind out of our sail and limit what we can do. **How do you engage your employees in the mission and the work of the CPSC?** It’s important to maintain positive morale. In order to do that, people have to realize we’re making progress, that they’re able to do their jobs, that the chairman is not pulling them off task and that they are allowed to be professionals. I meet weekly with the leadership team, and more times if needed. And I encourage them to be proactive to prevent product-related deaths and injuries. We went through a very difficult period as an agency 2007 to 2008. I wasn’t here, but it was hard for the people who were here. We were in a reactive posture regarding the dangers with cribs and toys with lead that came from China. My philosophy is to look for emerging hazards and be in the position to address them. **What else do you do to connect with your employees?** I hope that my employees think that I am accessible. I have an open-door policy. I also have what we call an all-hands meeting when I feel like there’s something going through the agency and people want to know what’s happening. So I bring them all together and we use our broadcasting capabilities to broadcast to the employees in the field. I do try to encourage and praise staff for jobs well done. We do recognize people at the agency at an Employee Appreciation Day. **What leadership lessons did you learn working in state government?** The first thing I learned is that everyone appreciates knowing the mission and the vision of the leader. It’s very important to have a strategic plan that involves everyone so that there’s buy-in among your leaders and among the employees. I came to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and created a new strategic plan and worked with leadership within the agency to do that. The second thing I’ve learned is that it’s so important to recruit strong leaders to the agency. One needs to nurture these leaders and let them have strong leadership responsibilities in the agency. **What experiences prepared you for your job?** Having a law degree and practicing in the private sector as well as the public sector really has shown me an appreciation for the law and governance. It’s important that you understand not only how Congress works, but how the courts work. The ability to get into rule-making and statutory interpretation is invaluable for anyone who leads this agency. I think that my education and my work experience in state government laid the foundation for me to be effective at the CPSC. **Do you have any role models?** I always say my mother was my first role model. She was an elementary-school teacher and had an incredible work ethic. She was a very responsible person. I have a friend named Jean Toal who is now the chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. When she was a member of the state legislature, I admired how she prepared herself and the great work ethic she had. Dick Riley was governor when I was working in the House of Representatives in South Carolina. I observed how he treated everyone with great respect. He was a phenomenal listener. If I’m in a tough situation, many times I’ve thought, “What would Dick Riley do?” He has a great sense of calm. More from On Leadership: How to completely destroy an employee’s work life Photos | Leadership rankings for federal agencies Managing stress in the federal workplace Like On Leadership? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter : On Leadership: @post_lead | Editor: @lily_cunningham

Next cyberattack front could be your car

For the many folks concerned about cyberthieves hacking emails and stealing personal information from online accounts, here comes another worry: A cyberattack on your car – while you’re driving.  The computerized gadgets that make late-model cars safer and more fun to drive also provide an entry for thieves, terrorists and thrill-seeking geeks. GAO knows of no cyberattacks resulting in injury yet, but the report warns that remote “attacks could involve multiple vehicles and cause widespread impacts including passenger injuries or fatalities…cyber attackers could theoretically achieve massive attacks of multiple vehicles simultaneously.” Modern electronics provide several ways for hackers to get into your ride, sometimes without even touching it. With direct access to the vehicle, they can plug into the on-board diagnostic port now in many vehicles or the compact-disc player. They can gain short- and long-range remote wireless access through systems for keyless entry, Bluetooth, WiFi, cellular calls and satellite radio. Advanced electronics also allow cars to have safety features such as collision warning and automatic emergency-braking systems. These goodies come with lots of software. Citing Transportation Department data, the GAO said “a modern luxury vehicle could contain as much as 100 million lines of software code.” That’s about 15 times more than a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which carries hundreds of passengers on long-range flights. “[A]s the lines of vehicle software code increase, so does the potential for cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could be exploited through vehicle cyberattacks,” the report said.  While not meant to be alarmist, this also is not science fiction. In 2011, researchers from the University of Washington and University of California at San Diego gained remote access to vehicles “by exploiting software vulnerabilities” in General Motors’ OnStar and Bluetooth systems, the report said, and were able “to take physical control over the vehicle, such as controlling the display on the speedometer, shutting off the engine, and controlling the brakes.”  Industry and government experts are working to prevent cyberattacks before they happen. But that work takes time and hackers somewhere are probably now plotting to infiltrate vehicle electronic systems. GAO said there are technological solutions that can be built into new cars, but not installed in older ones. Incorporating those solutions, including encryption and authentication technologies, into the design and production process can take five years. Wade Newton, with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said car companies last year launched an effort “to facilitate the sharing of potential cyber threats and countermeasures – all of it in real time,” among other measures. He added that the alliance and Global Automakers, an organization of international manufacturers, “have joined together to begin development of voluntary cybersecurity best practices.” Meanwhile the Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “has taken steps to address vehicle cybersecurity issues but has not determined the role it would have in responding to a real-world vehicle cyberattack,” according to GAO.  “This way, NHTSA focuses on solutions to harden the vehicle’s electrical architecture against potential attacks and to ensure vehicle systems take appropriate safe steps even when an attack may be successful.” NHTSA takes cybersecurity very seriously, said spokesman Bryan Thomas, adding: “We understand that if consumers think they are one hack away from a crash, we’re not going to see the public acceptance we need to achieve the safety gains we’re after.”

Trump could save big bucks following report’s recommendations

If the Trump administration wants to save Uncle Sam big bucks, it doesn’t have to plan the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” as White House aide Stephen K. Bannon wants. Instead, it could do something much less dramatic and much more effective — follow the advice of the Government Accountability Office (GAO).   Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the reports have “resulted in $75 billion worth of savings over seven years, which is pretty remarkable. Based on the amount of budget authority that the GAO has, $3.8 billion over that same time frame, that’s a 20-to-1 return on investment, which is pretty good.” That is very good, even without counting the $61 billion in estimated savings that remain in the pipeline. Better yet is the 112-to-1 return on investment that the GAO said its 2016 recommendations would generate. Rather than cutting needed programs like those at the Environmental Protection Agency, whose budget is targeted for a 31 percent reduction under President Trump’s spending plan, he should focus on implementing GAO suggestions to make government more cost-effective. Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), the top Democrat on the panel, said, “From 2011 to 2016, the federal government has saved American taxpayers approximately $136 billion by carrying out GAO’s recommendations,” though “nearly half of the actions GAO recommended in the past reports have not been implemented.” That’s a road map for Trump. “This year’s report adds 79 new actions in 29 different areas that range across the federal government,” said Gene L. Dodaro, the U.S. comptroller general, who heads the GAO. As usual, he testified without notes like a bureaucratic savant. Dodaro told the lawmakers he is “worried about the overall fiscal health of the federal government.” In fact, “the federal government’s on a long-term unsustainable fiscal path,” Jessica Lucas-Judy, the GAO’s strategic issues director, said in a podcast about the report. “And as policymakers are facing difficult choices, GAO’s report provides almost 400 different opportunities to make the government more efficient and more effective.” Pointing to examples of duplication at the Defense Department, Dodaro told the senators that the department would “save tens of millions of dollars by better managing their virtual training programs and integrating them and simple things like advertising for recruitment purposes, where there are seven different advertising programs competing in the same market.” We’re not going to look at all 79 new actions, so let’s stay with the Pentagon. Admittedly, it’s an easy target because it’s so big, spends so much money and has so many places to be more efficient. One is with Navy shipbuilding contracts. Paying shipbuilders to fix things on new ships that should have been delivered without flaws is an expensive problem. The Navy paid $4.9 million to correct issues, on top of the purchase price.  Navy officials told the GAO this is cheaper because a warranty in the purchase contract would increase the cost more than the price of repairs. But a shipbuilder should have enough confidence in its product that problems should be covered by the purchase price, much like for a new car. That’s the way the Coast Guard operates. It requires “the shipbuilder to repair and pay for an unlimited amount of shipbuilder-responsible defects within the first year after delivery,” the GAO said. “The Coast Guard has claimed over $1.5 million worth of repairs under the ship’s warranty — a 145 percent return on investment when comparing repair cost savings to the cost for the warranty.” It seems the big Navy can learn something from the small Coast Guard. The GAO said the Navy should “structure contracts so shipbuilders cannot earn profit for correcting defects for which they are responsible” and consider using warranties. Defense officials told the GAO that they would study this common-sense recommendation and report by December 2016. As of Friday, the Pentagon had not provided the GAO with that report.

Navy Yard shooting might have been prevented, Pentagon review shows

The Defense Department is likely to reduce the number of employees who hold security clearances by at least 10 percent and has vowed to overhaul the way it screens personnel, officials said Tuesday as they released the results of several inquiries into the Sept. 16 mass shooting at the Navy Yard. The reviews offered a damning assessment of the department’s ability to monitor the trustworthiness and reliability of a workforce that grew exponentially in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They also made clear that the Pentagon has issued security clearances to many employees and contractors who are not required to access classified information in the course of their jobs. Investigators found that Navy personnel and supervisors who later employed gunman Aaron Alexis as a defense contractor “missed opportunities for intervention” that could have barred the former sailor from retaining a secret security clearance and unfettered access to military installations. “The reviews identified troubling gaps in the Department of Defense’s ability to detect, prevent and respond to instances where someone working with us decides to inflict harm on this institution and its people,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday morning. Despite the numerous lapses outlined in the two internal assessments and an independent review, the Pentagon said it has not disciplined or fired anyone as a result of the case, the second deadliest mass shooting on a U.S. military installation. “We hold Aaron Alexis accountable,” said Cmdr. Amy Derrick-Frost, a Pentagon spokeswoman. The gunman was fatally shot by police, ending the rampage. The reports offered no new substantive clues about the motives of Alexis, who was reported to have exhibited paranoid and delusional behavior in the weeks before he walked into a Navy Yard building and gunned down 12 Navy civilian personnel and contractors. The independent panel commissioned by the Pentagon concluded that the department’s procedures to protect sensitive information and installations are outdated and must better take into account security threats posed by insiders. “Threats increasingly are from within,” Paul N. Stockton, one of the experts commissioned by the Pentagon to conduct an independent review, said in an interview. “There needs to be a systemic solution.” The panel also urged the department to take a hard look at the number of employees who actually need to access classified information for their jobs, noting that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the number of clearances approved annually has tripled. The shooting has reinvigorated efforts to develop a system in which individuals with security clearances would be screened continuously based on up-to-date information such as police records and arrest reports. Currently, the department relies mainly on reviews that are conducted every five or 10 years. A pilot program that recently screened 3,370 soldiers, civilians and contractors against government databases and other sources suggests that the type of enhanced screening system the Pentagon hopes to standardize could yield troubling information about a high percentage of the workforce, according to the report. Investigators found red flags on about 731 individuals in that sample, including 99 with “serious derogatory information” that included financial issues, domestic abuse, drug use and prostitution. The review led the Pentagon to yank the clearances of 55 employees and the access to military facilities of the remaining 44. In the case of the Navy Yard shooting, the first missed opportunity came when the Office of Personnel Management, which conducts the bulk of security clearance reviews for federal workers, screened Alexis in 2007. The agency’s report included “multiple discrepancies that went undetected and unchallenged,” the Pentagon’s main review found. Investigators did not learn details of instances in which Alexis was arrested for violent episodes involving firearms. He also failed to report the extent of his debt and an overseas trip. Those oversights appear to be fairly routine. The main Pentagon review notes that 31 percent of background investigations of prospective or current defense employees conducted by the Office of Personnel Management are assessed as “incomplete or inadequate.” In many instances — including Alexis’s — security clearances are nonetheless granted. Three years before he left the Navy in 2011, Alexis’s supervisor recommended that the sailor not be retained, classifying him as a service member with “significant problems.” Despite that finding and a subsequent arrest, Alexis was given an honorable discharge and Navy officials did not follow procedures to document a pattern of “chronic” troubling behavior. That enabled Alexis to keep his secret clearance, which later helped him land a job as a computer technician with the Experts Inc. None of the derogatory information about his time in the Navy was relayed to the firm, the Pentagon’s review found. But the reviews faulted the Experts for failing to seek assistance from mental health professionals or guidance from the Pentagon when colleagues became alarmed by Alexis’s delusions and paranoia. The firm did not respond to a phone call and e-mail requesting comment. Stan Soloway, the president and chief executive of the Professional Services Council, a trade organization that represents government contractors, said that security clearance reform has been needed for years and that continuous monitoring of cleared workers “is absolutely critical.” “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “But the implementation is going to be a challenge.” The culture of the investigations would need to be radically reformed, he said, with an increased reliance on technology. “We have a process now that is so heavily dependent and focused on interviews and shoe leather,” he said. Evan Lesser, the managing director at ClearanceJobs.com, said it could take years to fully implement meaningful changes. “We have 5 million cleared professionals,” he said. “They’re working all over the globe. Continuous monitoring sounds like a great idea, but from an implementation standpoint it’s going to be costly and difficult.” Some relatives of Navy Yard victims were disappointed by the Pentagon’s reports. Sidney Matthew, an attorney for the family of victim Mary Frances DeLorenzo Knight, called them a “whitewash” and questioned why no one has been held accountable. “This was negligence by people,” he said. “There should be heads rolling.”

Airline workers criticize new TSA policy on small knives

The Transportation Security Administration disregarded the safety of airline passengers and workers with its decision to relax carry-on restrictions beginning next month, according to labor groups representing airline workers. TSA Administrator John S. Pistole announced Tuesday that the agency would allow small knives, souvenir baseball bats, golf clubs and other swingable sports equipment onto planes starting April 25. Criticism of the policy has been swift, with one labor group mounting a petition to reverse the decision. A TSA official said the rules conform with international standards and allow agency personnel to focus more on “finding higher-threat items such as explosives.” “If our officers can spend less time looking for small penknives and more time looking for explosive devices, we’re better at doing our job of protecting the safety of the American people,” TSA spokesman David Castelveter said Thursday. “A small knife will not enable a terrorist to bring down an airplane.” Castelveter said aviation agencies have added new levels of security to prevent the type incidents that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four planes using box cutters. Cockpit doors are now heavily fortified, and the TSA now uses behavior-detection officers to help identify potential attackers, he said. But labor groups say the new policy is dangerous. “It’s absurd, this fixation on the cockpit and the plane being used as a weapon of mass destruction” said Veda Shook, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. “We’re totally on board with that, but there’s everybody else in the rest of the plane.” Castelveter said that “TSA’s primary mission is to stop a terrorist from bringing down an airplane,” whereas traveler safety is a “tangential or residual benefit of the things we do.” “I feel safe knowing there are air marshals to get involved if there is an unruly passenger on board,” Castelveter added. Federal air marshals are not on every flight, and the union that represents the law enforcement officers opposes the new TSA policy. “They act like everybody on the back side of that cockpit door is disposable,” said Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. The union contends that marshals will face greater risks in confronting dangerous passengers. “They can execute a first strike and take control of our weapons,” Adler said. He added that TSA officials did not consult with labor leaders “or any other stakeholder group” before changing its policy. The Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations said much the same in a statement Thursday. “CAPA is deeply concerned that industry stakeholders were not consulted prior to implementing these changes,” it said. Castelveter noted that the TSA consulted officials from its subsidiary agencies, including the Air Marshal Service, before making its decision. The new policy will allow passengers to carry pocketknives with blades less than 2.36 inches long and less than half an inch wide. Adler noted that a prisoner killed a federal corrections officer last week. He said the inmate stabbed the officer in the neck multiple times with a small knife made of plastic. The Association of Flight Attendants has created an online petition with the White House to reverse the TSA decision. As of Thursday, the petition had drawn about 5,300 of the 100,000 signatures required for an official response from the Obama administration.

Pentagon looks at the threat from within after Navy Yard shooting

ACCOMPANYING THE horror and grief that follow a mass shooting is the inevitable question of whether anything could have prevented the violence. In the case of last year’s shootings at the Washington Navy Yard, the answer is yes. That is the heartbreaking conclusion of a Defense Department review released Tuesday. Hopefully lessons learned from this will speed changes to help prevent future tragedies. The report examined the events that resulted in the slaying of 12 Navy civilian and contractor personnel on Sept. 16. It found “missed opportunities for intervention” that could have prevented the gunman, Aaron Alexis, a former Navy reservist working for a private contractor, from retaining the security clearance that gave him unrestricted access to the Navy Yard’s Building 197. Warning signs about Alexis’s mental health were overlooked or ignored. Federal officials signed off on his security clearance despite questionable gaps, and the information technology firm that employed him failed to report disturbing behavior Alexis exhibited in the weeks leading up to the shooting. Among the report’s recommendations are sensible suggestions to improve the security-clearance process by insisting on more information, routinely updating background checks and setting up a system to evaluate and handle employees who may be a threat. Removing the stigma often associated with seeking mental health treatment is a continuing challenge. The report also suggests that too many workers have security clearances who don’t need them, thus diluting resources. What’s significant — and disturbing — about the Navy Yard shooting is that it’s not the first time the military has faced a danger to its personnel and facilities from within. The Pentagon report and accompanying internal review noted with alarm other cases of threats posed by trusted insiders, including the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in which Maj. Nidal M. Hasan shot and killed 13 people and wounded dozens more and the incident in 2012 in which Spec. Ricky Elder fatally shot his battalion commander at Fort Bragg and then killed himself. It’s time, the report says, for the military to rethink outdated security theories that focus only on external threats and strong perimeters and to recognize the potential for terrorism and mayhem from within. **Read more on this topic:** Charles Krauthammer: The real Navy Yard scandal Dana Milbank: After Navy Yard shooting, RIP for gun control Eugene Robinson: Navy Yard shooting hits home John Hamre: Navy Yard shooting exposes flawed security clearance process  The Post’s View: Navy Yard massacre should move Americans to more than sorrow

Update Ukraine: Safe to Travel? Yes.

Pro-Russia rebels. A downed passenger airplane. Surface-to-air missiles. A ruthless leader whose name sounds like a mispronunciation of a popular French Canadian dish. The list reads like a nail-biting Le Carre spy novel. But no, it’s just another week in Ukraine. Despite the gripping incidents of the past 10 days, experts are not warning travelers to stay away from the country. Instead, it’s Ukraine Ho! “The conflict is in eastern Ukraine, off the tourist track,” said Ed Daly, director of watch operations for iJET International, a risk-assessment company. “It’s heavy Cossack territory, industrial with no tourist infrastructure.” The popular tourist areas — Kiev and points due west, as well as Russia — are said to be safe. Tour operators continue to run trips to this region with confidence. “These countries are still open for tourism,” said Douglas Grimes, who owns MIR, a tour company that specializes in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet republics. This spring, the 28-year-old company suspended trips to Kiev to avoid the heavy protests roiling the capital, but it has since restored its small-group and customized tours. The summer voyages have “all gone smoothly,” Grimes said. But “the biggest shame is Crimea. We haven’t had anyone go there.” Grimes said that he is waiting to see how events in that region shake out and will probably send a representative down on an exploratory mission. Viking River Cruises backed out of Crimea in the spring because of heightened tensions, State Department warnings and uncertainty over Russian visa requirements. The cruise line canceled its Footsteps of the Cossacks sojourn, which sailed between Kiev and Odessa, and replaced it with a 12-day itinerary between Bucharest, Romania, and the Black Sea. Other cruise lines, including Windstar, Oceania, Costa, Regent Seven Seas and Azamara, have made similar port substitutions and route alterations. (In another volatile zone, Costa Cruises announced plans to modify itineraries that include stops in Israel. Fall cruises on Costa Pacifica will replace Ashdod and Haifa with Istanbul and Volos, Greece; the Sept. 5 cruise on Costa Deliziosa will drop two Israeli ports and add Istanbul and Greece’s Volos and Heraklion.) One sector of the travel industry is largely bypassing eastern Ukraine altogether, at least from above: airlines. After the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, many carriers started diverting routes to safer airspace. “Some airlines are avoiding Ukraine entirely,” Daly said. “It’s minimally disruptive. They can make up time in the air.” One carrier — Emirates — has even suspended service to Kiev. Like the rest of the world, it is monitoring the situation down below. **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide

Two cruise passengers are evacuated in two incidents in Va., Md.

Two passengers with medical problems were taken off a cruise ship bound for Baltimore in separate incidents Friday and Saturday, the Coast Guard said. In the Saturday incident, in the Chesapeake Bay, the Coast Guard took an 80-year-old passenger off the ship, the Grandeur of the Seas, after receiving a report about 7 p.m. that he had collapsed, with CPR in progress. The passenger, relatives and medical personnel from the ship were taken to the Coast Guard station in Annapolis. The passnger was taken from there to the Anne Arundel Medical Center. The Coast Guard said he was in stable condition when transferred. On the day before, while the Baltimore-bound cruise ship was still off the North Carolina Coast, a 60-year-old passenger was reported in respiratory arrest, the Coast Guard said. The Coast Guard met the ship east of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel about 6:35 p.m. Friday. The passenger, and the ship’s medical officer were brought to shore in a 45-foot rescue boat, , and the passenger was then taken to Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital, the Coast Guard said. No information was available about his condition. With 11 decks, the giant cruise ship is 916 feet long, and can cruise at 19 knots, according to the website of Royal Caribbean International. It cruises to destinations including the Bahamas, the southern Caribbean, New England and Canada.

U.S. government suspending more risky contractors, GAO says

For years, watchdog groups have lamented that many government agencies continue to work with contractors that act unethically, commit fraud or perform poorly. But as the U.S. government has tried to crack down on wasteful spending, the number of companies suspended and prohibited from contracting with federal agencies has grown significantly. And on Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office reported that even those agencies that previously were the least likely to end ties with questionable contractors are now taking actions against them more frequently. Across the government, the number of suspension and debarment actions jumped from 1,836 in fiscal 2009 to 4,812 last year, an increase the GAO said was largely the result of an effort to beef up staffing and oversight of lucrative contracts and grants. The report took particular note of six agencies that spend many billions of dollars a year on contracts but “had virtually no procurement-related suspensions and debarments” in 2009. But after a campaign coordinated in large part by the Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee to help the agencies root out questionable companies and work with inspector generals, the number of suspensions and debarments reported by the six agencies increased from 19 in 2010 to 271 last year, the GAO found. The six agencies are the departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, Justice, State and Treasury, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The GAO also focused on the Department of Veterans Affairs, which more than doubled its suspensions and debarments from 34 in 2011 to 73 last year. “The findings are good news for agencies,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight. “More importantly, agencies that once lagged in their contractor responsibility activities are now active, and as a result, risky contractors are not getting taxpayer dollars. Although the government has a very long way to go in this area, it is good to see the government correct its shortfalls rather than ignore them.” Amey said there are still problems, however, including the timeliness of suspensions. He noted, for example, that BP was suspended by the Environmental Protection Agency more than two years after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. (The suspension has since been lifted.) Stan Soloway, the president and chief executive of the Professional Services Council, a trade group representing contractors, said the increase in action was not surprising, given the attention it has gotten in the White House and Congress. “There clearly is a concerted effort to root out bad actors,” he said. “It’s been a focal point of the administration for a number of years.” But he said agencies should guard against simply pumping up their numbers in an attempt to show they are cracking down. “It still has to be in cases where it’s warranted,” he said. There have been some cases, he said, “that were real head-scratchers and really raised questions of fairness.” The GAO report came at the request of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, who has pushed to streamline the process of making sure shoddy contractors stop receiving government contracts. “The current process for keeping taxpayer dollars out of the hands of criminals, tax evaders, and the chronically incompetent is stove-piped, fractured, and inadequate,” he said in a statement last year.

When Navy ships collide, there is virtually always human error involved

Ten years ago, Scott Cheney-Peters stood watch on the bridge of the USS Fitzgerald, a guided-missile destroyer deployed to the Pacific. Despite sophisticated navigation systems, keeping the ship a safe distance from other vessels in crowded maritime corridors was complex, especially at night, he said. “The bridge teams have help from some automated systems that suggest what they think is happening and can alert the human operators to potentially dangerous situations,” said Cheney-Peters, the founder of the Center for International Maritime Security, which facilitates discussion of naval issues. “But as with any algorithm, those alerts can be occasionally thrown off, in this case by things like large waves or two other ships very close together — so it’s humans that have to ultimately make navigation decisions.” Early Saturday morning, the Fitzgerald found itself at the center of one of the ugliest maritime incidents in years for the Navy. The 505-foot long ship collided off the coast of Japan with the Philippine-flagged MV ACX Crystal, a 730-foot container ship. The Crystal ripped a 12-foot hole in the starboard (right) side of the Fitzgerald’s hull, fully flooding the third and fourth platform levels of the ship and drowning seven sailors in sleeping quarters, according to Navy officials and an unclassified document obtained by The Washington Post. Three additional people, including the ship’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, were medically evacuated from the ship by helicopter, Navy officials have said. The dead included Gunner’s Mate Seaman Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19; Yeoman 3rd Class Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25; Sonar Technician 3rd Class Ngoc T. Truong Huynh, 25; Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Noe Hernandez, 26; Fire Controlman 2nd Class Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23; Personnel Specialist 1st Class Xavier Alec Martin, 24; and Firecontrolman 1st Class Gary Leo Rehm Jr., 37. The damage to the Fitzgerald, which typically carries about 279 U.S. service members, is so extensive that senior Navy officials are discussing spending $8 million to put it on a powerful heavy-lift ship and bring it back to a shipyard for repairs, the document said. The Navy did the same with the USS Cole, which was hit by terrorists with explosives in October 2000, and the USS Samuel B. Roberts, which was nearly sunk by an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf in 1988. Several investigations are now underway to determine what happened. And if past is prologue, the Navy will assess how human error on the part of either crew could have led to such a catastrophe, despite all of the radar and communication systems on board. Similar situations occur about once every decade or so, and are a “deep, powerful reminder of how fundamentally dangerous it is to operate warships at sea,” said retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who was once the captain of a sister destroyer, the USS Barry. “To understand ‘how could this happen,’ you need to think of that particular area of the sea as an eight-lane highway, at night, with ships moving at speed — but no traffic lanes,” Stavridis said in an email. “Any sudden, erratic move by another ship poses an extreme risk, with little time to react, exactly as if a car just ahead of you on the highway suddenly turned around. At night, it’s hard to figure out the visual picture and correlate it with the radar images. The investigation will pull that apart with extreme diligence, and accountability will be swift and ruthless.”  “The incident will become the basis for extensive scenario training by the Navy to try as much as we can to avoid the next such incident — [everything] from ship handling, to command and control, to technology and warning systems will be examined and improved,” he said. “But the cost of losing those seven sailors will never be recovered, tragically. It is a heartbreaking day for the good ship Fitzgerald and her captain.” Previous collisions also may come up as the service scrutinizes how to avoid another accident. In one recent incident, the USS Porter, another destroyer, collided in 2012 in the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran with the MV Otowasan, an oil tanker. An investigation found that the Porter’s crew missed that the tanker was in front of them while watching out for other traffic in the tightly congested waterway. In that case, the Porter’s captain, attempted to cross left ahead of the tanker to avoid a head-on collision, but was not able to do so in time to avoid a blow to the starboard side. Analysts have so far questioned the unusual path of the Crystal, which was proceeding on a course toward Tokyo but performed a sudden U-turn and returned to where it had been. Company officials said the turn actually happened about an hour after the collision, as its crew turned back to check on the Fitzgerald. One former naval surface warfare officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said it appeared to him that the Fitzgerald was in the wrong when it was struck by the Crystal. “I’m always troubled when you see a hit on the [right] side,” the former Navy officer said. “My gut is that [the captain] will be questioned on why he didn’t turn right.” The officer said he was surprised that Benson wasn’t on the bridge at the time of the collision, and was instead hurt in his quarters. The waterways where the two vessels collided are notorious for the heavy volume of shipping traffic, where lights and radars contacts can make navigation extremely difficult. After seeing where the collision was, the officer said those with experience in damage control knew right away what had become of the missing sailors, as their berthing areas flooded and were sealed. “We knew they were trapped inside,” he said. “We knew it had turned into a chamber of death.” Among the work the Navy will undertake in coming days is offloading the Fitzgerald’s weapons and fuel, and gathering data from the ship’s electronics so that the incident can be reconstructed. Presently, anyone going aboard the ship needs permission from a senior military officer.

GAO critical of VA verification efforts

The Department of Veterans Affairs should improve the planning and data system related to the process it uses to verify that the companies winning work set aside for veteran-owned small businesses are actually eligible, the Government Accountability Office says in a new report. In its assessment, the GAO acknowledges that the VA has taken steps to improve its verification process, but argues the agency needs to improve its long-term strategic plan. The plan “lacks performance measures” and its focus is too short-term, according to the GAO. Additionally, the report is tough on the VA’s data system, which “does not collect important data and has limited reporting and work flow management capabilities.” The GAO recommended that the agency refine its strategic plan and integrate efforts to fix the data system with the plan. The VA concurred with both recommendations. Newport News-based shipbuilder **Huntington Ingalls** completed its first full year as an independent, public company in 2012 after being spun off from **Northrop Grumman.** The key to taking advantage of this new status is being more focused on the company’s specific business, said **Mike Petters,** the company’s president and chief executive, in a roundtable with reporters earlier this month. Hiring and retaining shipbuilders, for instance, is quite different than hiring and retaining an IT staff, he said. As an independent company, Huntington Ingalls, which has an office near the Navy Yard in the District, can focus on its bailiwick. He said the company is still in the early stages of building its brand. “That is a work in progress — and you are not ever done,” Petters said. But “I think people know who we are now.” The GAO earlier this month rejected a protest filed by Reston-based **SOS International** over an Army purchase of intelligence technical support services. After SOS International filed an earlier protest on the program — which was first awarded to McLean-based **Six3 Intelligence Solutions** — the Army told the GAO that it would reevaluate the price proposals and make a new decision. As a result, the GAO dismissed SOS International's protest. SOS International then filed another protest, arguing that the Army’s strategy was inadequate because it did not include plans to reevaluate the technical and past performance factors. The GAO said it found the protest “to be premature” and dismissed it. The GAO also ruled against a protest filed by Bethesda-based **Clark Construction Group** , which had contested awards made by the Army Corps of Engineers to six construction firms, including Fairfax-based **Balfour Beatty Construction**. Clark contested its evaluation, particularly arguing that it had a lower price than Balfour Beatty. However, the GAO wrote that the Army Corps of Engineers documented its analysis and that its decision not to select Clark was “consistent with the [solicitation’s] emphasis on non-price factors.”

Report casts doubt on TSA’s behavior detection efforts

A new report casts strong doubt on the effectiveness of one of the government’s main tools for detecting potential terrorists before they board airplanes: behavior detection efforts by the Transportation Security Administration. Stephen M. Lord, a Government Accountability Office official, told a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing Thursday that there is no solid evidence that the TSA techniques are effective. “Until TSA can provide scientifically validated evidence demonstrating that behavioral indicators can be used to identify passengers who may pose a threat to aviation security, the agency risks funding activities that have not been determined to be effective,” according to a GAO report. TSA Administrator John S. Pistole defended the work of agency behavior detection officers (BDOs), telling the panel they “provide a crucial layer of security. “

Coast Guard cutter fires warning shot at Iranian sailboat in brief altercation

If things weren’t already tense enough in the Middle East, a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat got into an altercation Tuesday with an Iranian sailboat in the Persian Gulf, the Pentagon announced. U.S. military officials said the trouble started when the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Monomoy, which regularly patrols international waters in the Gulf, approached an Iranian dhow, a traditional sailing vessel used by fisherman and traders. According to the U.S. account, the cutter dispatched a smaller boat with some folks on board, apparently to try to get closer to the dhow and possibly climb aboard. The dhow was less than friendly, however; its crew pointed a machine gun at the visiting party. In response, the Monomoy fired a warning shot, which apparently had its desired effect. The dhow sailed off, the cutter retrieved its personnel from the small boat and went its own way. “I know there was one shot fired. Nobody hurt. Both the cutter and the dhow parted ways and there wasn’t more to it than that,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters in a brief summary of the incident. Coast Guard patrol boats have performed maritime security operations in the Gulf since 2003 and can board suspicious vessels. The 110-foot cutters complement larger U.S. Navy ships in the region. The Coasties are there to enforce international maritime law, but sometimes they lend a hand. Indeed, the Monomoy generated a spate of headlines in January 2012 when it rescued six Iranian fishermen whose dhow had flooded.

Diplomats’ commute: It’s not the traffic, it’s the danger

For U.S. diplomats in dangerous places overseas, the worst part of the job can be getting to and from work. It’s not the traffic. It’s the danger.  “Travel routes of U.S. government employees and their family members are particularly vulnerable to attack,” the report said. “From 1998 to 2015, more than 100 attacks targeted personnel in transit, including officials en route to work facilities or their residences. Several of these attacks resulted in fatalities.” While State provides various protection methods, including armed guards, armored vehicles and training for staffers and family members, the weaknesses mean “personnel and their dependents are especially vulnerable when traveling outside the relative security of embassies, consulates, or residences.” The 26 posts GAO reviewed had transportation security and travel notification plans, but policies at 22 locations were incomplete, lacking elements State required. The department “also lacks a clear armored vehicle policy for overseas posts,” GAO said. A 2004 murder of a diplomat in Iraq, “was almost certainly caused by his failure to follow the post’s security policy,” according to the report. That killing led to six recommendations from a 2005 accountability review board. GAO later found that more than three-quarters of the foreign post policies it reviewed were missing at least one of the recommended security directives. State provides training to regional security officers and other staffers on such topics as defensive driving and personal security measures. But when GAO investigators visited nine posts, they found “staff had difficulty remembering key details covered in new arrival briefings or described the one-time briefings as inadequate. State’s requirements for providing refresher briefings are unclear, potentially putting staff at greater risk.” In four of the nine posts, employees received important threat warnings late. “In one case,” GAO said, “this resulted in an embassy vehicle being attacked with rocks and seriously damaged while traveling through a prohibited area.” In a response included in the report, State said that before the attack, the embassy’s regional security officer “sent multiple text-based messages … warning employees the area in question was off limits to them.” State added, “employees must also exercise fundamental security responsibilities” by checking for safety notices. State Department officials agreed with seven of eight GAO recommendations to improve embassy management of transportation risks. “The Department supports all initiatives that assist us in further refining and monitoring our robust security programs,” State’s response said. Ironically, those risks might have increased along with increased security at U.S. government buildings overseas.  “According to State, U.S. government employees and their families are most at risk on these transportation routes,” GAO said. To mitigate that risk, State agreed to pay Worldwide Protective Services $2.7 billion for private security contractors to provide transportation protection in high-threat areas during fiscal years 2011 through 2016. The department also said it would spend $310 million on armored vehicles during that same period. Another $100 million was spent on federal agents, host nation police and local guards in 100 countries. Individually, any of the security weaknesses is a cause for concern. But “in the aggregate, they raise questions about the adequacy of security for U.S. personnel and their families overseas,” GAO said. “Until it addresses these issues, State cannot be assured that the deadly threats U.S. personnel and their families may face while in transit overseas are being countered as effectively as possible.”

TSA could be smarter about the way it deploys air marshals, government watchdog says

Many more commercial airline flights take off every day than there are federal air marshals to fly with them. So the Federal Air Marshal Service has to make hard decisions about how best to deploy those undercover agents in the sky.  The air marshals’ complex scheduling process tries to balance the marshals’ assignments between domestic and international flights, while also deploying the agents according to the relative risk posed by different geographic areas within the United States. Right now, although risk data is factored in, those determinations are largely based on assessments that draw on the experience and expertise of officials in the agency, the GAO says. The watchdog report suggests, however, that federal air marshals shift from decisions by seasoned professionals to more data- and intelligence-driven analysis. “We want to make sure that these air marshals are on the right flights,” GAO spokeswoman Jennifer Grover said Wednesday. “A well-documented and well-grounded risk assessment process would be a good way to validate the decisions that have been made.” A TSA spokesman said Thursday the agency and the marshals agree with the GAO findings on better integrating risk-based factors in deployments and have already implemented two of GAO’s recommendations. The agency is working on implementing the others, the spokesman said in an email.    Of 238 flights deemed to have the highest risk from 2010 to 2014, there were 150 with air marshals aboard, for a coverage rate of 63 percent, the GAO report says*. (The TSA calculated the rate differently, according to a more complicated scoring system that takes into account its performance targets across a range of risk levels, the GAO says.)

Democrats ask GAO to study ‘root causes’ of federal employees’ low morale

It’s well known that federal employee spirits are low, but how low? Top Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and two of its subcommittees want the Government Accountability Office to find out. They have asked the GAO to study “trends in federal employee morale.” It doesn’t take a scientific study to know that employee morale has fallen to a bad place. Nonetheless, if the GAO decides to do the study, it could provide valuable pointers on improving the current dismal situation. “This GAO study is exactly what we need right now,” said William R. Dougan, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “There is little hope for the relentless political attacks on federal employees to stop without Congress fully understanding the impact these attacks have on federal employee morale.” In a letter sent last week to the GAO, Reps. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) and Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) wrote that low morale “may be compromising the federal government’s ability to serve the American people.” Citing the recent three-year freeze on basic federal pay rates, unpaid furlough days for many workers and a partial government shutdown, the representatives began their letter with an understatement: “The last few years have been challenging for federal employees.” Labor and management welcomed the proposed study. “We embrace any effort that seeks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government,” said Patricia Niehaus, president of the Federal Managers Association. “Low morale has a significant negative impact on keeping good workers and attracting the best and the brightest to federal service.” The Office of Personnel Management “always welcomes GAO’s involvement,” said OPM Director Katherine Archuleta. Spokespeople for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the committee chairman, did not respond to requests for comment. The GAO, an arm of Congress, has to decide if it will do the study. “GAO has a process it goes through to determine whether we begin work and when, and that process can take a few weeks. No decisions have been made,” said Jennifer Ashley, a GAO spokeswoman. Although employee morale problems have been demonstrated through the OPM’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) and the Partnership for Public Service’s “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government,” a GAO study can go further than those reports. As Max Stier, Partnership for Public Service president and chief executive, said, this is a “great request” that could provide data Congress could use to improve the federal workplace. Congress and the administration also pay attention to the OPM and “Best Places” reports, but the requested GAO study would drill down into the reasons for poor morale and look at what could be done about it. The letter asked the GAO to examine seven questions: “1. What have been recent trends in federal employee morale and engagement based on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) and other available data broken out by grade level, position, and other demographic attributes? “2. To the extent that they can be determined, what are the possible root causes underlying the trends in federal employee morale and engagement? “3. What has been the impact of federal employee morale and engagement on recruitment and retention, employee performance and productivity, and achievement of agency mission? “4. How, if at all, are selected agencies acting on the results of their FEVS engagement measures, including incorporating key drivers of engagement into their daily management practices? “5. To what extent is the Office of Personnel Management providing tools and other resources to help agencies improve employee engagement and do agencies find this assistance helpful? “6. For agencies that have significantly improved employee engagement, what lessons have been learned, especially as they relate to improved individual and organizational performance? “7. What efforts are being undertaken to implement the President’s fiscal year 2015 management initiative, and what are the initial results of those efforts?” Gregory J. Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents federal employees, said the proposed study is a “terrific” idea. He hopes it would “get well below the surface” and show “the lack of investment in the federal workforce . . . that dramatically lowered morale.” President Obama’s fiscal 2015 budget proposal recognizes the need for greater investment through increased training for a workforce that has not received much lately. “We also want to invest in our federal workforce by developing government-wide enterprise training and resource exchanges,” said Frank Benenati, an Office of Management and Budget spokesman. “For example, the budget includes funding for the Office of Personnel Management to expand opportunities for the Senior Executive Service.” Archuleta has been meeting with Cabinet secretaries to discuss employee engagement, and the OPM is providing agencies with data-driven tools designed to improve employee morale. “I know the Cabinet secretaries are very, very engaged” she said. “I’m heartened. I know they are very serious about it.” They need to be. Getting federal employee morale where it needs to be will be a long, hard task. **Twitter:@JoeDavidsonWP ** Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/   JoeDavidson.

Report says federal fragmentation, overlap, duplication abound

The Government Accountability Office keeps Uncle Sam’s to-do lists.  The GAO released its sixth annual list last week, providing elected officials with plenty of ammunition to fire at their favorite bureaucratic targets. In the first five reports, “we presented over 200 areas and 544 actions for Congress or executive branch agencies to reduce, eliminate, or better manage fragmentation . . . greater efficiency or effectiveness,” Gene L. Dodaro, the U.S. comptroller general and GAO head, said in his letter fronting the report.  Cummings said the latest report “shows that Congress could be doing much more to foster a more efficient, effective and accountable government.” “According to GAO, the executive branch has fully or partially completed 81 percent of GAO’s recommendations,” he added. “That is an impressive success rate, particularly in light of the budget cuts agencies have endured in recent years. “Congress, on the other hand, has implemented only about 46 percent of GAO’s recommendations. Even that 46 percent is kind of generous because GAO gives Congress credit for taking ‘partial’ action by just moving a bill through committee, even if it has not been passed either in the House or Senate.” Legislative shortcomings didn’t get much attention from legislators at the hearing. They focused on a number of other problems that weaken Sam’s operation. The numbers, pulled by the majority Republicans from the report, indicate the broad scope of issues examined by the GAO’s small staff: 37 — new areas “identified by the GAO as being in need of reform.” 41 — the percentage of recommended actions “fully addressed since 2011.” 63 — the percentage of 346 GAO-recommended actions for the Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Defense departments that have been open since 2011. $125 billion — savings to be gained from fully implementing the GAO’s recommendations. In specific areas, the GAO said the Internal Revenue Service “could potentially collect billions of dollars . . . by better managing fragmentation and overlap, improving communication, and streamlining processes.”  The mammoth Defense Department could more effectively use the $100 billion it spends annually on weapons systems, GAO reported, by reducing “the potential for overlapping and unnecessarily duplicative investments.” Federal civilian agencies could save millions if they were allowed to obtain excess Defense property, including office furniture, some equipment and vehicles, through the Pentagon’s disposal process, the report said, “rather than purchasing similar property through a private sector supplier.” David Tillotson III, assistant deputy chief management officer at the Defense Department, sought to assure the committee that the Pentagon “has always taken its duty to be an excellent steward of taxpayer dollars very seriously, and we look forward to working with the GAO on improvement opportunities.” In health care, the GAO found that because of limited oversight, “some hospitals’ total Medicaid payments exceeded the hospitals’ total operating cost — that is, cost for all hospital services provided to all patients the hospital served.” Speaking for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Patrick Conway said in written testimony that the agency is “using a multi-faceted approach to strengthen our programs by more closely aligning payments with the costs of providing care.” We’ll call him a Medicare-Medicaid official because his title is 20 words long. (For the curious, it is “acting principal deputy administrator, deputy administrator for innovation and quality, and chief medical officer, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.”) Perhaps the GAO should examine how much money could be saved in printing costs if government titles were limited in length.

Democratic platform celebrates the low number of regulations Obama has approved

In their 2012 platform, Democrats celebrate new regulations they've put in place to protect consumers, children and workers. At the same time, they also boast of how few regulations the Obama administration has approved overall. "That there’s no question that some regulations are outdated, unnecessary, or too costly..." the platform says. "That's why [President Obama] has approved fewer regulations in the first three years of his presidency than his Republican predecessor did in his." The claim is true when you look at the total number of regulations that the Obama administration has approved, according to OMB Watch's evaluation of the administration's regulatory reports. But as of July, Obama has passed more "economically significant" regulations — those with "an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more or adversely affect in a material way the economy...productivity, competition, jobs, the environment, public health or safety" — than either Clinton or Bush did in a single term. (My colleague Josh Hicks has a more detailed comparison of Obama and Bush's regulatory policy here.) The discrepancy speaks to the fact that the sheer number of regulations that a president approves doesn't tell the full story. "Measuring regulations by simply the number of regulations is not simply a useful metric," says Daniel Schuman, policy counsel for the Sunlight Foundation. "One regulation could have many more components than another regulation. It's like comparing containers without being able to see what inside them." Instead, the platform's boast about approving fewer regulations reflects the larger push by the Obama administration's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to use more rigorous cost-benefit analysis to evaluate new regulations and streamline and roll back old ones that are deemed inefficient or unnecessary. According to the platform, the administration's push to "look back" at old regulations "will save at least $10 billion over five years, and will eliminate tens of millions of hours in annual paperwork burdens." And Schuman believes Obama has been more focused overall on the net benefits of regulation, rather than simply their sheer cost to businesses. The Democratic platform, for instance, claims that the regulations passed "have more than 25 times the net benefits" of Bush's regulations, even though there have been fewer of them. (I'm waiting to hear if there's been an independent verification of this figure.) Republicans, in fact, generally agree that the cost-benefit evaluation of regulations is a good thing, and their own platform calls for a mandatory regulatory lookback, albeit a much stronger version that would automatically attach a sunset clause to regulations. But not everyone is thrilled with Obama's approach to regulations: In recent months, Obama's regulatory approval process has slowed down, irritating progressive advocates, and they're not pleased with the big focus on looking at old regulations. "Too much looking back takes resources away from looking forward," says Randy Rabinowitz, director of regulatory policy for OMB Watch.

Same travel worries — but more of them — in State Department’s updated overview

At least every six months, the State Department updates its Worldwide Caution, which warns U.S. travelers of pressing threats and dangers. On July 29, the agency released the newest version, which highlights high-profile attacks since the top of the year and strengthens the language for certain destinations. The department’s overall message remains the same. “Recent terrorist attacks . . . serve as a reminder that U.S. citizens need to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness,” the document states. “The Department of State remains concerned about the continued threat of terrorist attacks, demonstrations and other violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests overseas.” In light of current events, it reminds Americans of terrorists’ methods of violence and delineates common target locations. Many of the spots are popular among travelers, such as hotels, restaurants, public areas, sporting events, shopping centers and public transportation. It also mentions more specific examples, such as the January attack at a Paris kosher market, the February shootings at a cultural event in Copenhagen and the March massacre at a Tunisian beach resort. As before, the global caution provides detailed information on six regions, including Europe, Africa and South Asia. Several of the destinations hold slight appeal for the typical tourist. But for the few who are curious, well, they might want to wait awhile. For example, in the Middle East section, the agency added this stern warning: “Private U.S. citizens are strongly discouraged from traveling to Iraq, Syria, or any other country to join in armed conflict.” It also heightened concerns in Libya and Tunisia. However, a number of the countries and cities mentioned in the report do rank high on Americans’ wish lists, despite ongoing rumbles. For example, in the entry on Kenya, the agency draws attention to terrorist strikes in the Nairobi area, along the coast and around the northeast. For India, the department repeats the same pronouncement from January: “India continues to experience terrorist and insurgent activities which may affect U.S. citizens directly or indirectly.” The State Department urges travelers to stay informed and in touch. Follow the news and check the travel alerts and warnings on the agency’s Web site. Also sign up for the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program to receive security notifications and assistance in case of an emergency. **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide

Piracy back on the rise off Somalia, U.S. military says

CAMP LEMONNIER, Djibouti — After years of relative calm, piracy is on the rise again off the coast of Somalia, U.S. officials here said Sunday. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the Marine officer in charge of the U.S. Africa Command, said there have been “five or six” piracy incidents in the region in two months.  “I wouldn’t say it’s a trend, but we’ll watch it,” he said. After a coordinated international response to piracy in 2010 and 2011, including additional patrols of U.S. and European naval ships in the waters around Somalia, the number of pirate attacks in the past five years has been negligible. That has changed in recent months. “It has certainly increased,” said Navy Capt. Richard Rodriguez, chief of staff of the U.S. task force in the Horn of Africa. Rodriguez told reporters that the U.S. task force has a monitoring role, while local authorities and units led by the European Union take the lead in assessing the resurgent threat. An Indian ship was hijacked by pirates this month, just weeks after an oil tanker was seized in nearby waters. In 2011, there were more than 230 pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau. In the years since, shipping companies have increased security measures, including using anti-boarding devices and armed contractors to deter pirates. A defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, partially attributed the recent spike in pirate activity to complacency among shipping companies, saying they may have relaxed their security procedures in recent years because of the reduction in threat. Mattis told reporters that the Pentagon would monitor the situation and that measures undertaken by shipping lines appear to be sufficient. “I don’t see a big military role,” he added. Mattis’s visit marks the first time a high-ranking Trump administration official has visited Africa and comes as the U.S. military increases pressure on militant groups in the region. In March, President Trump gave the Pentagon new authority to conduct airstrikes against the terrorist group al-Shabab in Somalia, and the U.S. military has conducted about 70 airstrikes against al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen in two months. Camp Lemonnier, the only permanent U.S. base in Africa, also has continued to expand. In the past 15 years, the base has transformed from an austere Marine outpost to a sprawling military installation with 4,000 U.S. troops and dorm-style barracks. Nearby, the Air Force operates an independent drone base. The United States pays $65 million a year to Djibouti’s government to use Lemonnier. The base’s name is derived from a French Foreign Legion outpost built in the same area in the 1950s. The base’s strategic location on the Horn of Africa has made it central for U.S. forces in the Middle East and Africa, including help with missions in Yemen and Somalia. Lemonnier also sits just south of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a key choke point between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East that has been the scene of recent naval hostility between Yemeni Houthi rebels and Saudi forces. While Lemonnier is located near French, Italian and Japanese bases, a new Chinese outpost has raised concern among some U.S. officials. The base, an hour’s boat ride north, is under construction and is likely be used as a hub to help transit natural resources from the continent back to China. Currently, Marine aircraft from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit are staged at Lemonnier to help with operations in the region. The base also serves as a transit hub for U.S. forces working in Somalia. The contingent of about 100 troops there has attempted to bolster the fledging Somali military and its efforts against al-Shabab militants before a coalition of African countries, called AMISOM, fighting al-Shabab withdraws in 2018. U.S. officials, however, have suggested that AMISOM’s withdrawal could be contingent on the Somali military’s ability to conduct operations without support. According to Rodriguez, there are about 22,000 AMISOM troops in Somalia and 12,000 Somali troops. The Somali military would have to be about the same size as the current AMISOM contingent to effectively counter al-Shabab militants, he said.

‘Put riders first’? That’s what we do.

Douglas M. Duncan called on Metro to put its riders first . That’s a goal all of us who work for the system share. In fact, over the past two years, we have been steadily making many of the same safety and reliability improvements that Mr. Duncan advocated. Beginning with board governance reform, and led by senior management together with frontline employees, Metro has put safety at the forefront of its policies, investments and daily practice. We have implemented recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Transit Administration, trained our workforce, bolstered safety management and regularly made detailed progress and incident reports to the full Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority board, as well as to the board’s safety committee and the public at large. On June 11, we announced a customer-service action plan comprising more than 50 initiatives that are underway to improve the customer experience, including many areas on which Mr. Duncan commented. Here are just a few examples of the projects we are delivering: customer-service training for frontline employees, online autoloading for SmarTrip customers, enhanced announcement systems, real-time alerts for train and bus riders, improved communications during incidents and emergencies, and the installation of electronic information boards. Our regular riders know that we are using nearly every weekend and available overnight hour to improve system safety and reliability. After years of disinvestment and neglect, we are rebuilding the system from the ground up — by modernizing tracks, rail and bus equipment, escalators and elevators, and stations. Metro Forward is the largest capital construction program undertaken since the system opened. Even in a rebuilding mode, however, we are adding services, including more peak-period trains this summer, and are preparing to add Silver Line service. Bus customers are benefiting from a $5 million investment in Better Bus service upgrades designed to improve reliability in priority corridors, including new limited-stop MetroExtra routes. Our employees are Metro’s greatest asset in accomplishing these improvements. We make the results transparent through a scorecard called Vital Signs that is posted on our Web site. The annual Vital Signs report demonstrates that Metro has met or exceeded nine of 11 performance metrics. Of course, we have more work to do to deliver the quality of service our customers expect and deserve. The continued commitment of our partners in Maryland, Virginia and the District to safety, strategic investment and sound public transit policy is helping us put riders first every day. The writer is general manager and chief executive officer of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. ****

Cruise ship crashes into gangway at Baltimore port

The Carnival Pride cruise ship struck a gangway as the ship was docking in Baltimore on Sunday morning, sending the gangway crashing down on three parked vehicles. Some passengers said they felt a thud as the bow of the ship struck the gangway but they weren’t sure what it was. No one was injured in the incident and the pickup trucks that were crushed were unoccupied, officials said. Some on the cruise, which was returning from an eight-day trip to the Bahamas, said they weren’t too concerned about the incident after learning no one was hurt. “Accidents happen,” said Esther Smith, of Wellsville, Pa. She and her husband, Eric Smith, were celebrating her 50th birthday on the cruise. “The fact that no one was hurt changed the whole mood of it,” Eric Smith said. No one was using the gangway, which is used by passengers to get on and off the ship, when the ship made contact with it, said Jennifer De La Cruz, a spokeswoman for Carnival. The pickup trucks belong to cruise employees. The Carnival Pride is one of two cruise ships that have a home port in Baltimore, port spokesman Richard Scher said. The incident caused minor damage to the ship, but De la Cruz said it planned to deport on time Sunday afternoon for another cruise. Passengers getting on and off the ship had to use a crew gangway at the pier level. “I was just so thankful that no one was hurt,” said Michele Church, 56, of Wilmington, Del. She saw the aftermath of the incident from her ninth-floor room. “Because someone could easily got killed.” Nicole Newsome, a friend of Church’s from Wilmington who was part of an eight-person group of friends, said she felt a “hard thump” when the gangway was struck. “We just thought that’s what happens when you dock,” said Newsome, 45. Carol Francis, 68, of Towson said it sounded like a “big boom” and was initially concerned about someone being trapped in the truck that was crushed. But she said she wasn’t worried for her own safety. “It wasn’t like we were in the middle of the ocean,” she said.

A year after the “poop cruise,” Carnival is having one of its best sales years yet

As vacationers hoarded snacks and human waste dribbled down the walls of last year’s “cruise from hell,” many expected Carnival, the world’s biggest cruise operator, had suffered a business-wrecking hit.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But new numbers show the stink from the cruise line’s high-profile disaster last year has already begun to fade. Carnival just logged one of its best summers in history, beating projections by posting nearly $5 billion in sales of tickets, tours and on-board goodies. It’s on track to earn $16 billion in sales this year, breaking a company record. Many more people bought tickets, with Caribbean cruises booking nearly 20 percent more guests this summer than the year before, company filings show. And once those cruisers were sailing, they spent nearly 10 percent more on things like vacation trinkets and fruity drinks. The good fortunes for the vacation giant that was so recently a laughingstock surprised not just analysts, but Carnival itself. Chief executive Arnold Donald said Tuesday on a conference call that the cruise line’s “recovery is probably a little faster than we had a right to believe it would be.” Last year was one nightmare after another for Carnival, the $31 billion cruise behemoth that runs its namesake cruise line and 10 other big-ship brands worldwide. A fire in the Carnival Triumph’s engine room in February stranded the ship’s more than 4,000 passengers and crew for four days with no power or running toilets, turning the floating resort into a “hot port-o-potty.” A month later, mechanical problems aboard the Carnival Dream and Carnival Legend led the cruise line to cancel scheduled stops and, in the Dream’s case, fly passengers back home.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In the months since, Carnival has emptied its pockets and cranked up its marketing to win back grossed-out passengers. The cruise line spent $300 million installing emergency generators and upgrading ships’ safety systems, convened a board of outside experts, including two retired U.S. Navy rear admirals, to review the fleet, and built new rum pubs, game shows, cocktail bars and water slides through an initiative they called “Fun Ship 2.0.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Miami megafirm also slashed ticket prices — by more than $80 million in one quarter last year, according to corporate filings — and offered cruisers full refunds, plus 10 percent on top, if they didn’t leave leave satisfied. All the spending and cutting, though, carved deeply into their profits: The cruise line is expected to pocket $1 billion less in profit in 2014 than it earned in 2008.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Carnival has bounced back from messy vacation fiascos before. In 2010, the same year an engine fire stranded the Carnival Splendor off San Diego’s coast, the company reported an 11 percent jump in income over the previous year. YouGov BrandIndex said last year Carnival suffered “one of the steepest drops in consumer perception for a brand” since BP and the Gulf oil spill. But index analysts now say in their mid-year report that “no company has made greater strides in perception than Carnival.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The cruise line’s breezy summer was fueled by big growth in China, which executives said could one day become the “largest cruise market in the world.” As for now, though, Americans rule the seas: Half of the 21 million cruise passengers this year hail from the U.S., data from Cruise Lines International Association show.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Next year could prove tougher for Carnival, which will have to drydock many of its ships to upgrade fuel systems and install exhaust-cleaning “scrubbers” to meet new pollutant rules, dinging Carnival’s revenue. But analysts said the cruise line will likely continue to leave the worst of its “poop cruise” days behind — as long as it can avoid another embarrassment. “It just takes time to get the confidence back from the cruising customer that they’re not going to have some horrible experience,” said C. Patrick Scholes, a senior lodging and leisure analyst with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. “The best thing they can do is stay out of the news.”

Best and worst places to work in federal government

It’s no secret that federal workers are feeling worn down. They’ve had their salaries frozen and are at the center of a partisan debate over the value of their work. A report due out Thursday, based on the largest sample ever of the workforce of 2 million, confirms a steady decline in morale and ebbing commitment. Despite positive feedback at some agencies, job satisfaction across the government has hit its lowest point in almost a decade. Just 52.9 percent of employees at the sprawling Department of Homeland Security, for example, are satisfied with their jobs, making it the lowest-ranked large agency, followed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The seventh annual “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” rankings pose a challenge for the Obama administration as President Obama, who pledged to reinvigorate federal work and make government “cool again,” embarks on a second term. Even workers at layoff-battered private companies are more optimistic than government employees, who historically have had far more job security, the survey by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service found. Still, most federal workers say they are committed to the missions of their agencies. “We work for a horrible agency, but we do great work,” said Ricky D. McCoy, a recently fired transportation security officer at Chicago O’Hare International Airport and former president of Local 777 of the American Federation of Government Employees. Just 32 percent of employees at the Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, are satisfied with their pay, which is among the lowest in the government. McCoy said he expects the TSA’s first collective-bargaining agreement, signed in November, to improve morale. “We’re hopeful now that things will turn in our direction,” he said. DHS, which was created after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has suffered from high turnover in top jobs. Spokeswoman Marsha Catron said leaders are “focused on continuing to improve employee engagement” with better communication from managers, training and rewards for good work. But in some corners of the government, workers are happy. Employees at NASA, which ranks as the best place to work in the government, give high marks to leaders and supervisors and a culture that encourages telework. Most of all, they value their mission to continue space exploration even as the 30-year-old shuttle program was retired last year and the transition to new deep-space rockets has been slow. “Our future was not as clear when people said goodbye to the shuttle,’’ said Jeri Buchholz, NASA’s personnel director. “But people rolled into new projects. They knew there really was a future in space exploration.” And no one lost their job. Among large agencies, the intelligence community came in second, followed by the State Department, the Commerce Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. The small U.S. Army Audit Agency logged the highest score, with 85.7 percent of its workforce reporting good things about their positions and bucking a troubling trend. Government-wide, 60.8 percent of employees were satisfied with their jobs this year. It’s the lowest score since the partnership began reporting the rankings in 2003 and a drop of 3.2 percentage points from last year. Even workers’ commitment to their agencies’ missions, the main driver of government work for many, is ebbing. Workers’ perceptions of their leaders were key to their job satisfaction. Attitudes about leadership — as well as factors including pay, advancement opportunities and rewards for good performance — dropped. Many gains from 2008 to 2011 were erased. Morale improved at a third of the 362 agencies and departments surveyed, according to the partnership and Deloitte, which draw their conclusions from data collected by the Office of Personnel Management. About 700,000 federal workers responded to the survey. “We take these results very seriously,” said Controller Danny Werfel, who coordinates the Obama administration’s management initiatives from the Office of Management and Budget. “We need to understand where we can do better.” Werfel said federal managers have a more granular understanding of their agencies than ever this year, because the census of the workforce was distributed to all permanent full- and part-time employees, compared with a sample of 266,000 last year and even fewer before that. The budget office was the most improved of any agency, jumping 13.3 percentage points. Werfel attributes the shift to better communication and more flexibility at one of the most demanding workplaces in government. He said the administration is “committed to addressing the problem” of leaders who fail to energize their staffs. Even with persistent budget conflicts on Capitol Hill that leave workers uncertain about whether they can serve the public, Werfel noted that nearly all employees said their work is important, seek ways to improve it and are willing to make an extra effort. But Max Stier, president of the partnership, called the growing lack of confidence in federal leaders an alarming trend that the administration needs to prioritize. “Even with the external challenges, we’re seeing a failure of management,” he said. The survey shows how important good leadership can be. Debbie Matz, chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, attributed her mid-size agency’s jump from the 17th spot to No. 6 to stronger communication between managers and employees. A promotion test for examiners who audit credit unions also improved, she said. “With so many people using government employees as a punching bag, there’s a lot of angst, so employees tend to blame their managers,” she said. Among mid-size agencies, a new category this year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took the top spot. The Broadcasting Board of Governors was at the bottom, followed by the National Archives and Records Administration, which has struggled with poor morale. Archivist David Ferriero said feedback from employees and a new partnership with labor unions have identified key problems: The staff wants better training and more career development. Among small agencies, the Surface Transportation Board, which regulates railroads, held on to its first-place ranking from 2011, with 84.3 percent reporting satisfaction. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative ranks as the worst small agency, at 32.7 percent. Former employees said its sense of mission was eroded by an ambivalent attitude toward free trade early in the Obama administration and during the economic crisis. Views of the agency’s leaders plummeted 18.9 percentage points over 2011. Although 77.3 percent of government employees say they value their agencies’ missions, that support dropped slightly over 2011. The Department of Veterans Affairs ranked 18th out of 19 large agencies. “We have a lot of issues and problems,” said Max Collier, assistant director of a VA community liaison program. “The VA is not as transparent as it should be. We haven’t had a pay raise in, what, three years now? To work here, you have to have a passion for helping veterans.” He gestured to a plaque on the wall outside VA’s headquarters in downtown Washington displaying Abraham Lincoln’s famous words: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.” “We’re not making chocolate bars here, we’re taking care of veterans,” Collier said. Department results within agencies varied. The Commerce Department, for example, took the fourth spot among large agencies, with 80.3 percent of employees at the Patent and Trademark Office saying they’re happy, the result of a reduced backlog of applications and teleworking. But Commerce’s Office of the Inspector General ranked second from last among small departments, at 37.2 percent. John Berry, the government’s personnel chief, said it’s critical that managers pay attention to the survey results, given the fiscal challenges they may face. “The government is likely to be on a pretty strict diet for the foreseeable future in terms of resources,” he said. “We are encouraging every agency to dive into their results and pay attention to them.”

TSA’s new rules on knives are safe and reasonable

KNIVES ON planes: Can the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) be serious? That has been thereaction of some members of Congress to the TSA’s announcement that it will loosen restrictions on what passengers can carry aboard airliners. Next month, federal airport screeners will no longer force you to surrender hockey sticks, golf clubs, toy baseball bats or pocketknives — as long as the blades don’t lock in place and aren’t too long. In fact, it makes sense for TSA agents to be looking for bombs that could bring down a plane, not scouring luggage for penknives. The agency is not and cannot be in the business of protecting every passenger and crewmember from every conceivable threat. If it tried, it would have to ban a lot more than knives, and its effort would cost far more money, gobble up more of passengers’ already overbooked airport time or both. Instead, government resources and travelers’ time should be spent with a sense of priority. Airplanes pose unique dangers that justify the frustration that comes with airport screening. Terrorists have committed mass murder by using planes as weapons: forcing them to crash and blowing them up in midair. In the post-Sept. 11 era of reinforced cockpit doors, savvy passengers, a more robust air marshal program and flight attendants trained in self-defense, allowing penknives onto planes would not result in such tragedies. The change would, however, lead to less hassle for the tourist who forgot to take her knife off her key ring and less wasted time for the screener who must do the hassling. Opponents charge that the opposite could be true; instead of just confiscating knives, TSA agents might have to measure blade lengths. Yet if X-ray screeners were allowed simply to let items that are obviously pocketknives pass through, that would surely result in fewer time-consuming secondary bag inspections. The TSA, meanwhile, says that the screening process has gotten more efficient since it started allowing small scissors and knitting needles aboard in 2005 and lighters onto planes in 2007. Some also wonder why passengers should be allowed to carry knives on planes when they still have to take off their shoes for X-ray screening. But terrorists can and have fit improvised explosive devices into shoes. They could combine certain liquids in an airline cabin and cause a disaster. TSA is right to loosen up on pocketknives before such items as shoes and liquids. Instead of pouncing on the TSA for its rules change, lawmakers should enable — indeed, press — the agency to continue adding building a flexible and focused security system capable of blocking big and unexpected threats. **Read more on this issue:** Alexandra Petri: The screening system remains absurd Jonathan Capehart: Get rid of the shoe-removal requirement

Investigating federal programs to make sure public dollars are spent wisely

For the past five years, federal watchdog Steve Lord has been looking at airport body scanners and baggage screening equipment differently than most of the traveling public, focusing an objective, critical eye on airport security systems and machinery, and informing powerful people about what he sees. Lord, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) director, has helped evaluate multi-million dollar passenger, baggage and air cargo screening programs run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), including the canine teams that roam airports sniffing out explosives. TSA spends billions of dollars a year, so it’s critical that GAO, Congress’ investigative arm, oversees how effectively the agency runs its programs, Lord said. “The agency plays a critical role keeping airplanes secure and finding terrorists. It’s up to GAO to find if the money is well spent and, if there are gaps, where do they exist,” he said. That involves examining programs, people, processes and technology, he said, GAO’s watchwords. Sometimes, agencies are reluctant to hand over information that can help Lord’s team evaluate a program. “Agencies balk on giving you data,” he said. “You know they have it but they’re sensitive when GAO shows up on doorstep. During his time overseeing TSA, Lord has become known as an aviation expert, involved in security investigations that raised questions about several issues: whether TSA’s behavior-detection program was based on reliable science that could be applied on a large scale at airports; whether TSA should better vet foreign nationals getting U.S. flight school training to learn how to operate an aircraft, and if vulnerabilities exploited by the 9/11 hijackers were fully addressed; and if the agency’s 800 body scanners were effective and fully utilized. The body-scanner investigation thrust Lord and his team’s work into the public eye almost daily after President Obama pushed to deploy scanners at airports, and debate raged over whether the scanners would have caught the passenger on a Detroit-bound jetliner who allegedly attempted to set off explosives hidden in his underwear. Over the course of his nearly three decades at GAO, Lord became highly knowledgeable in several other areas, by reviewing security assistance and reconstruction programs around the globe and helping oversee other federally funded programs in Europe and Russia. His work involves a lot of time analyzing data and talking with agencies. “Sometimes data doesn’t exist and we’ll collect ourselves” said Lord, who has testified before Congress 14 times during the past two years. That means going into the field and “kicking the tires,” he said, adding that it’s important because the perspective in Washington can be different from that of the people on the ground implementing programs. For example, when the Department of Defense higher-ups talked carefully about their rebuilding programs in Iraq, construction workers on site gave Lord important additional information. When giving objective advice on security to TSA to help the agency understand how it can strengthen some of its programs, GAO is serving as an “honest broker,” Lord said. “We don’t always tell them what they want to hear, but its stuff they need to hear,” he said. Lord and the people he manages produce solid and substantial work because he recognizes their strengths and motivates them to do their best, said Cathy Berrick, managing director of both Homeland Security and Justice, and Forensic Audits and Investigative Services, the team Lord is transitioning to now. “He’s very creative,” she said. “He looks at issues and problems from different angles and perspectives and has excellent judgment. Quality is always top priority for him.” During one recent investigation, Lord and his team determined that TSA could do a better job of managing the National Canine Program, which uses teams of explosives-detection dogs to screen passengers and baggage. In the January 2013 report he signed off on, the GAO found that canine teams were not complying with monthly training requirements, and were deploying passenger-screening canines before determining their effectiveness in some cases. “They were collecting really good data,” Lord said. “They should better use the data on where to deploy teams.” Lord began his GAO career as an intern before joining an international affairs team that focused on embassy construction and U.S Aid for International Development programs. He served for three years in the agency’s office in Frankfurt, Germany, in the early 1990s. He made five trips to Baghdad to inspect U.S.-funded programs to rebuild the country’s electricity, oil and water sectors, which involved billions of dollars. In 2008, he was deployed to Baghdad for three months, living in the Green Zone with a few thousand other Americans. He actually worked in one of Saddam Hussein’s “very-well fortified” palaces, where he noticed chandeliers made of plastic, a lot of shoddy construction and faulty electrical wiring. Inspecting the quality of the palace was not part of his official job. But looking closely at his surroundings is just something Lord seems to be used to doing. _This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go tohttp://washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about more federal workers who are making a difference._

Inspector general faults FAA amnesty program

Air traffic controllers who admit to falling asleep or playing video games when they should be directing airliners can escape punishment under a reporting system that the U.S. Transportation Department’s inspector general says is seriously flawed. “The intent of the reporting program is to improve aviation safety, not to provide amnesty to controllers who like to watch movies or take a nap while on the job,” said House Transportation Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-Fla.). “Controllers must conduct themselves in a professional manner.” The inspector general also found that controllers responsible for plane crashes can escape the Federal Aviation Administration’s retribution if they own up to their mistakes. The inspector general’s 28-page report came at the request of Mica and Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Tom Petri (R-WI) after a hearing they held in April to delve into the increasing number of reported controller errors. The report this week raises questions about whether the FAA’s desire to collect the best possible data on mistakes has protected controllers from punishment for misdeeds such as sleeping on the job, which in a few high- profile cases lead to firings last year. It says controller mistakes are a “significant safety concern.” The FAA and the controllers’ union, which worked together to create the reporting system, defended that approach. “No other safety program has identified and fixed more local and systemic problems,” said Steve Hansen, who chairs the National Air Traffic Controllers Association’s safety committee. “The [FAA] now has more and better-detailed safety data than before. The high level of participation shows controllers see the program as a way to improve safety.” The FAA, in a statement, defended the Air Traffic Safety Action Program, which renders controllers immune from punishment if they report their mistakes. “The FAA is improving the program based on recommendations the IG’s office has made,” the FAA statement said. In a written response to the inspector general, the FAA said it was taking action to comply with eight of the report’s 10 recommendations. The major point of disagreement was over whether ATSAP should shield a pilot who admits to a mistake that may have caused a plane crash. The FAA said immunity is beneficial because controllers “might be more accurate and candid in an ATSAP report than they might be in interviews with either NTSB or FAA.” The inspector general countered: “Aviation professionals should understand that it is their responsibility to be candid with a federal investigator after an accident.” “FAA should take seriously the recommendations by the IG and make needed reforms to strengthen the program, and we will be working with the agency to ensure that this happens,” Petri said. The overwhelming majority of mistakes made by controllers do not put passengers at risk, but even during the safest era in U.S. commercial aviation history, there have been numerous occasions when controller mistakes have allowed planes to come dangerously close to each other. There were 1,234 recorded operational errors in fiscal 2009. Although there were more than a million fewer flights in 2010, the number jumped to a record 1,887. Some near collisions came under review by the National Transportation Safety Board, including: a Boeing 737 nearly hit a helicopter while taking off from Houston; a Boeing 777 skimmed under a small plane on takeoff from San Francisco; a Boeing 737 nearly collided with a Cessna in Burbank, Calif.; an Airbus 319 passed 100 feet above the path of a Boeing 747 taking off in Anchorage; and an Embraer 135 taking off from Chicago took evasive action to avoid an in-bound twin-engine prop plane.

GAO finds relatively few, but serious, cases of corruption at Customs and Border Protection

The first thing to note about a recent report on corruption at Customs and Border Protection is that the Government Accountability Office study found very few dirty officers. Arrests of “CBP employees for corruption-related activities since fiscal years 2005 account for less than 1 percent of CBP’s entire workforce per fiscal year,” the GAO says. Also worth noting is that most arrests, by far, were for such conduct as drunken driving and domestic violence, not such corrupt activities as drug and people smuggling. Yet, the report paints a scary picture about those who are corrupt and a somewhat less than flattering view of agency actions to prevent and uproot rotten eggs. And although the problem is small in terms of the number of employees involved, it is significant enough that House and Senate panels have repeatedly called CBP officials to Capitol Hill to discuss misconduct and the sometimes flawed efforts to stem it. The GAO did its report in response to a request from Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.). “The GAO report confirms that not only is corruption still a problem, CBP still lacks adequate controls to detect corruption, such as post-employment polygraphing,” McCaul said. “While CBP polygraphs all new hires, they do not test incumbent employees, whom the CBP Acting Chief Operating Officer has said can become corrupt during their tenure — on average about 8.8 years into service.” Many people don’t realize that CBP is the largest uniformed law enforcement agency in the United States “We deploy over 47,000 law enforcement personnel along the U.S. borders, at ports of entry and overseas on a continuous basis in support of our critical border security mission,” Acting Commissioner David Aguilar told Congress last year. “Not only do our officers and agents serve under difficult circumstances and in dangerous environments, they do so in an environment where transnational criminal organizations attempt to exploit our workforce for criminal gains.” The attempts sometimes are successful. There “have been a number of cases in which individuals, known as infiltrators, pursued employment at CBP solely to engage in mission-compromising activity,” the GAO reports. Examples include the CBP officer who was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being arrested at her El Paso duty station in 2007 and charged with conspiracy to import marijuana, and a former Comstock, Tex., Border Patrol agent who was convicted in 2009 and given 15 years for conspiracy to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana. The GAO report acknowledges that CBP uses various tools — including background investigations, random drug tests and periodic investigations — to thwart corruption. But the report says, “CBP has not developed a comprehensive integrity strategy to encompass all CBP components’ initiatives. Further, CBP has not completed some postcorruption analyses on employees convicted of corruption since October 2004, missing opportunities to gain lessons learned to enhance policies, procedures, and controls.” CBP did not dispute the report’s findings and has agreed to implement seven GAO recommendations. Joanne M. Ferreira, a CBP spokeswoman, said the agency “will implement appropriate measures to address all of them, including the feasibility of expanding the polygraph program to incumbent law enforcement officers, developing a plan to implement a comprehensive integrity strategy, and completing post-corruption analysis reports for all CBP employees who have been convicted of corruption-related activities to help identify and prevent future corruption and misconduct risks.” In June 2011, officials from CBP and the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general’s office were called to a Senate hearing to explain the lack of cooperation between their staffs in corruption probes. “We must conduct these investigations in an efficient and collaborative way. . . . This does not seem to be the way we are currently operating,” Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) said at the time. That spat among sibling agencies seems to have been resolved, at least according to officials’ comments now. “I am pleased with the cooperation we are receiving from CBP and the progress we have been making in stemming corruption,” Deputy Inspector General Charles K. Edwards said. Pryor didn’t sound convinced that the reconciliation is complete. “While improvements have been made, there is still plenty of work to be done,” he said. Senate confirmation of a CBP commissioner and a DHS inspector general, he added, “will provide stability and leadership and allow these agencies to work in a more collaborative fashion.” Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

GAO shuts down General Dynamics protest

The **Government Accountability Office** has denied a **General Dynamics** protest of a Marine Corps contract awarded to Reston-based **iGov Technologies.** In its protest, General Dynamics — the company is based in Falls Church but a Scottsdale, Ariz., unit filed the protest — complained that the Marine Corps had inaccurately rated its program as having deficiencies. Additionally, General Dynamics argued that the agency treated bidders differently and was unclear about the importance of particular evaluation criteria. In its decision, the GAO said the Marine Corps was reasonable when it rated GD’s proposal as technically unacceptable and that there’s no evidence the agency treated bidders differently. The GAO tossed General Dynamics’s arguments as having no merit. Herndon-based **Privia** earlier this month announced it has received $2.1 million in growth capital funding in a round led by Fort Worth-based private investment company Goff Capital, along with previous investors Open Prairie Ventures, Chicago Technology Partners and DL Investments. The company, which sells software to help contractors manage the bid and proposal process, was acquired last year from SpringCM by a group of private investors. It has since been particularly focused on growing its professional services training for customers using Privia’s software. The latest investment is meant to support the company’s professional services work as well as sales and marketing and product development efforts, Privia said in its announcement. **Microsoft** has promoted **Michael Donlan** to head its state and local government business. Donlan, who formerly served as general manager of government, national security and technology for Microsoft’s worldwide public sector, has been with Microsoft since 2003 and has also led Microsoft’s Asian public sector business. He has also worked at BearingPoint and Oracle. The GAO late last month denied McLean-based **R3 Government Solutions,** which had protested the award of a Coast Guard contract vehicle for various support services. Part of the contract was set aside for service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses, and the Coast Guard received 25 proposals from eligible businesses, according to the GAO’s decision. R3 did not make the final cut, and the Coast Guard made awards to six winners, including local firms Alexandria-based **DP George & Co.**, Reston-based **Crisis1** and Alexandria-based **Sayres and Associates** , among others. In its protest, R3 argued that the agency failed in its evaluation of the company’s senior cost analyst, but the GAO said it found no basis for R3’s claim.

Hope of finding more survivors from capsized Chinese cruise ship fades

BEIJING — Divers battled submerged debris and crews sliced into the upturned hull of a Chinese cruise liner Wednesday in a last-ditch hunt for survivors two days after the ship capsized with 456 people aboard. Early Thursday, the Chinese state television reported that the death toll had climbed to 75, leaving more than 360 people still unaccounted for. Just 14 people are known to have survived the disaster on the Yangtze River. Most were retirement-age tourists on an 11-day cruise. In the water, a tumble of beds, tables and chairs blocked divers’ access into the capsized Eastern Star. Some cabin doors also were locked, officials said, making the job of finding survivors and retrieving bodies significantly harder. Atop the hull, rescue teams began cutting through the metal in an attempt to find anyone who might be trapped in air pockets, the official People’s Daily reported. Amid the search, questions emerged about whether the boat, which had four decks and a relatively shallow draft, had been sufficiently stable to withstand stormy weather. Also facing scrutiny is its captain, who continued the cruise as rain and wind intensified Monday night — even while other vessels dropped anchor. The captain and his chief engineer were among the first to be rescued. Police are questioning them. But the Chinese government, ever wary that public outrage could be turned against the authorities, attempted to control the narrative. Officials discouraged local journalists from visiting the scene and tried to prevent foreign journalists from speaking to passengers’ relatives. China’s Internet police issued warnings against those who sought to point fingers or spread malicious rumors online. Censors deleted critical comments on social media. The government’s main focus, however, remained on the rescue effort, with nearly 2,000 workers, more than 100 boats and 200 divers deployed in what could be China’s worst ship-related disaster in nearly seven decades. Helicopters and planes scoured the waters of the Yangtze as the search area expanded to 135 miles downstream. Transport Ministry spokesman Xu Chengguang said that divers would continue searching for survivors and try to move the vessel only when more salvage boats arrived. “Our number one priority is to rescue people,” he said at a televised news conference. “As long as there is a glimmer of hope, we will not give up.” But Xu said that strong currents, wind and waves made the job harder. Sand and mud kicked up by the storm reduced visibility underwater. Diver Zhang Hucheng said he and his colleagues stay underwater for an hour at a time. “Now we are completely relying on our hands to search,” he told the official Xinhua News Agency. “Even though we have strong torchlights, the river water is very muddy. We can’t see anything.” Two people, including a 65-year-old woman, were brought out alive from air pockets inside the vessel Tuesday after rescuers apparently heard voices yelling for help. Xinhua showed images of bodies in yellow bags being ferried away by military rescue workers. Premier Li Keqiang, the Communist Party’s point man in disasters, was photographed bowing before two bodies covered in white shrouds. Li has also been photographed poring over maps, directing rescue workers and meeting survivors, to demonstrate, in the words of officials, how genuinely the government “cares for the people.” According to China Digital Times, a Web site dedicated to detailing media censorship, the government issued a directive to domestic news organizations not to send reporters to the scene and instead to rely on official media. “Reporters already there must be immediately recalled,” the directive said. “All coverage must use information released by authoritative media as the standard.” Nevertheless, some reporters from outside the state mouthpieces turned up, according to foreign journalists in the area. In 2011, journalists and others used social media to break news of a high-speed train crash in the eastern city of Wenzhou in which 40 people died and ask uncomfortable questions about safety. The resulting investigation saw powerful heads roll in China’s Railways Ministry, which was subsequently dismantled. Ever since, the Communist Party has dramatically cracked down on freedom of speech online. On Wednesday, Internet police in the central province of Hubei, where the disaster occurred, denounced “lawless people who ignore the truth, maliciously spread rumors online and even send out scam texts to families of the victims.” On a social media account, authorities vowed to punish anyone who made up rumors. Internet police in the northeastern city of Shenyang said only people with “ulterior motives” or who were “dead evil” would want to point fingers at a time when the nation should be focused on the recovery effort. Some social media posts — later deleted by authorities — criticized the effort to control news reporting. Others complained that the captain of the Eastern Star had deserted his sinking ship. “The captain and crew members displayed 100 times better escaping skills than the passengers,” one user posted on a microblogging site. “The captain is so professional he escaped unscathed.” On Tuesday, angry relatives of the passengers gathered at a government office in Shanghai — from where many of the passengers had booked the tour — and demanded more information, some briefly scuffling with officials, according to the Reuters news agency. Many relatives were taken Wednesday to the rescue site at Jianli in central Hubei province and were briefed by officials. One of those aboard the vessel was Gao Qianyue, who had just celebrated her third birthday and was taking her first boat trip with her newly retired grandparents. “She is only 3 years old, and now she is soaked in water — please save her first,” the girl’s mother cried, according to local media, before pointing at her husband. “The three people he is closest to — his mom, his dad and his daughter — are all on the boat, with their life uncertain. What is he going to do? What should we do?” In Shanghai, Wang Sheng said he had paid for his 72-year-old father and 65-year-old mother to take the cruise to see the Three Gorges Dam but regretted he had not gone along. “My mom was reluctant to go,” he cried, according to Xinhua. “If only I had gone with my father. At least I am young and strong, and I can swim. Maybe I could even have saved him. I am so sorry.” Meanwhile, attention turned to the safety of the Eastern Star, a 251-foot-long and 36-foot-wide vessel, especially in stormy weather. “Our shipbuilding and design have not taken into consideration extreme weather conditions such as storms and tornadoes when building ships used for inland rivers,” said Liu Shuguang, deputy director in the College of Economics at the Ocean University of China in Qingdao. “The capsized boat has a quite shallow bottom but is very high. It is only suitable for calm and tranquil weather conditions,” Liu added. But the possibility of human error playing a role also appeared to grow after local media reported that three other ships nearby had dropped anchor as the storm intensified. “The visibility was terrible, like being in fog, and the rain was interfering with the radar so you couldn’t make anything out,” Li Yongjun, the captain of a freighter, told Xinhua. Li said he decided to slow down, drop anchor and wait out the storm. As he did so, the Eastern Star passed his ship and continued upriver. Gu Jinglu, Liu Liu and Xu Yangjingjing contributed to this report. **Read more:** Survivor recounts harrowing ordeal aboard sinking Chinese cruise ship China bans ‘unofficial’ weather forecasts

Costa Concordia sinking leaves cruise ship passengers alarmed — and out of luck

Christopher Elliott The tragic sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise ship last week is leaving a line of worried passengers in its wake. Betty Westbrook is among them. The retiree from Allen, Tex., called me hours after the ship sank off the Italian coast, hoping that I could help her. “What are my chances for a refund?” she asked. Westbrook believes that had she been aboard the cruise liner, she might have been a casualty. “I’m 82, and I couldn’t have made it off the ship without help,” she says. Reading about the Concordia crew’s alleged unpreparedness for disaster has made her nervous about her February cruise to the Bahamas on the Carnival Magic. The Concordia went down Jan. 13 after running aground near the island of Giglio. At least 11 passengers died. The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, is reported to have maneuvered the ship too close to a fishing village. He has been arrested and is under investigation for abandoning ship, causing a shipwreck and manslaughter. Costa Cruises is owned by Miami-based Carnival, the world’s largest cruise line operator, and not surprisingly, some passengers are now having second thoughts about their floating vacation. A nonscientific online survey conducted soon after the disaster by the opinion Web site SodaHead.com found that one-quarter of those polled were “less likely” to book a cruise after the Costa disaster. Westbrook told me that when she heard about the Concordia sinking, she phoned her travel agency immediately to find out whether she could cancel her cruise. The answer to her question is: no refunds — at least not for her. “We’re not making any changes to our refund policy,” said Carnival spokesman Vance Gulliksen. If she canceled, Westbrook would lose her deposit or 75 percent of the total cruise fare, whichever is greater. Costa, however, is offering passengers scheduled to sail on the Concordia through Feb. 25 their money back and a 30 percent cruise credit. Meanwhile, the cruise line says it is covering the costs of lodging and return transportation for the Concordia’s survivors, as well as offering counseling to the passengers and their families “as needed.” It is also refunding all voyage costs, including onboard expenses. In a statement issued just after the incident, Costa and its corporate parent sought to assure passengers such as Westbrook that its vessels are safe. “Costa is committed to ensuring that no such incident ever occurs again,” it said. “Our number-one priority is always the safety and security of our guests and crew, and we comply with all safety regulations.” But passengers have some cause for concern, particularly when it comes to Costa, says Miami-based maritime lawyer Jim Walker. “In the last two years, Costa has had three significant incidents where crew members have been killed and passengers have been injured,” he says. On Feb. 26, 2010, the Costa Europa rammed into a pier in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, as it was trying to dock in rough weather. Three crew members were killed and three passengers were injured. And on Oct. 18, 2010, the Costa Classica collided with a Belgian cargo ship near China’s Yangtze River, injuring several passengers. Costa’s safety record isn’t the only thing that should frighten passengers, say Walker and other legal experts. Also worrisome are the flimsy legal rights passengers have when they book a cruise, outlined in a legal document known as the ticket contract, which is available on the cruise line’s Web site and is normally included with your ticket. For passengers with future cruise plans, the contract delivers some bad news: If you want a refund, and you’re within two weeks of departing on a European cruise, you’re out of luck. (If it’s anywhere between 44 and 15 days until your vacation, you can get half your money back.) The contract is equally restrictive as it applies to the Concordia’s survivors. The fine print limits the cruise line’s liability to about $71,000 per passenger, requires that any claim against the company be filed within a year, restricts the filing venue to a court in Genoa, Italy, and applies Italian law to resolving the dispute. For cruises from U.S. ports, Costa’s contract limits the venue for filing suit to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, effectively turning any lawsuit into a costly federal case. Other ticket language prevents smaller complaints from being brought together as class actions, further limiting passengers’ access to justice, say legal experts. Cruise line claims adjusters often send a series of letters to injured survivors, asking for more information. The time required for correspondence and documentation runs down the clock on any claims, according to David Deehl, an adjunct law professor at the University of Miami and the vice chairman of the American Bar Association’s Admiralty and Maritime Law Committee. “They’re appearing to want to settle, asking for more and more information,” he says. In fact, they’re usually intent on paying the least they can under the law. One place where cruise lines move quickly is in shoring up their own defense, Deehl notes. “They have their own civil defense lawyers who are often flown right to the ship to interview crew and passengers immediately, locking in their defense theories with sworn testimony,” he told me. If you’re considering a cruise vacation, experts suggest reviewing the ticket contract before booking to know what rights you have. If you’re uncomfortable with the terms, they recommend sticking to a land-based vacation. Travel insurance might help the Concordia’s survivors recover some of their lost property and pay for the expense of their interrupted vacation. But only the most expensive policy, known as “cancel for any reason” insurance, would have allowed a passenger like Westbrook to get a refund. (And read the policy carefully — some “cancel for any reason” policies offer only a percentage of your money back.) Westbrook says thather friends have advised her to stop worrying. After all, her vacation is taking place half a world away and on a different cruise line, even if it’s owned by the same company. But she says it’s difficult, although “it looks like I don’t have much of a choice.” It’s too bad that the survivors had to wait until the Concordia sank before they discovered that they have few rights of redress. And too bad it took a maritime disaster to reveal to other cruise passengers that they have virtually the same problem. Elliott is National Geographic Traveler magazine’s reader advocate and the author of “Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals.” E-mail him at chris@elliott.org.

The ‘survival craft’ that isn’t

A photograph accompanying the June 3 Metro article “Chesapeake Bay boater rescues 23 on school trip” illustrated a disaster that was narrowly avoided. Twenty-three people, including 14 fourth- graders, were on a small passenger vessel that sank in the Chesapeake Bay and were forced to sit on the vessel’s canopy to stay out of the cold water before being rescued by a good Samaritan. The doughnut-shaped device shown floating near the vessel is what the Coast Guard calls a “survival craft.” These craft do not provide out-of-water protection for anyone. Imagine 23 people clinging to that device had the vessel sunk in deeper water. This type of device was scheduled to be phased out and replaced before Feb. 26 with devices that would keep passengers out of the water. However, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.), at the behest of the passenger-vessel industry, inserted a provision in the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2015, which became law Feb. 8, repealing this phase-out. This type of accident has happened before. In December 1993, the small passenger vessel El Toro foundered on the Chesapeake Bay with 23 people on board. Three people died from hypothermia. The National Transportation Safety Board recommended that the Coast Guard “require that out-of-the-water survival craft for all passengers and crew be provided on board small passenger vessels on all routes.” It has been 104 years since the sinking of the Titanic, and we still don’t have survival craft on all passenger vessels to keep people out of the water in a maritime disaster. I worked on U.S. maritime policy for the House of Representatives for more than 33 years. This is the first time that I recall Congress stepping in to lower safety standards. I certainly won’t be taking my fourth-grade son on a vessel that doesn’t have survival craft with out-of-water protection. ****John M. Cullather** , Falls Church** The writer is a former staff director for the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation.

Metro hails SafeTrack as a success, but it has yet to translate into better service for riders

Twenty days from the anticipated conclusion of SafeTrack, Metro is hailing the year-long program as a success, saying the aggressive, round-the-clock maintenance has shrunk the proportion of defective track, reduced instances of smoke and fire, and cut service disruptions in the troubled subway system. But for riders, tangible benefits from the repair regimen remain unseen, officials and experts say, with on-time performance and customer satisfaction still lagging well below target at 69 percent, according to the latest figures. SafeTrack’s built-in disruptions have fueled the perception of decreased reliability, but continuing unrelated chronic breakdowns also contributed to a trend that has driven away customers in record numbers over the past year. In a new report to be presented to Metro’s board of directors Thursday, Metro says SafeTrack was successful in its effort to collapse three years of repair work into one, an overarching goal of the program that launched last June. As a result, the percentage of defective wooden crossties, which secure the running rails at the proper spacing in the system, has dropped from 22 percent to 2 percent, the agency said. Smoke and fire incidents have been reduced 16 percent, and rail service disruptions have decreased, meaning there were nearly a third fewer emergency shuttle bridges required than before, the agency said. (Metro has also run less service than in years past, with 16 rounds of extended shutdowns or single-tracking as part of SafeTrack. The program has affected 5,800 of the 7,000 hours Metro was in service since SafeTrack’s launch, according to the report.) “Overall, the SafeTrack program has been very successful in terms of the safety performance, the work completed and the schedule achieved,” Metro says in its presentation. “The past year has been the most aggressive renewal program of [Metro’s] history and it was achieved through tremendous hard work and cooperation across the region — from our employees, our riders and our stakeholders.” The program cost an estimated $150 million to $160 million, Metro spokeswoman Sherri Ly said Monday. The crosstie repairs are particularly significant, officials said, as SafeTrack primarily focused on those rail components, 47,500 of which will be repaired by the program’s conclusion — compared with 15,000 in a typical year. Deterioration of the long wooden beams was cited in the July 2016 derailment outside East Falls Church, which led to a slew of firings after an investigation revealed a pattern of employees in the agency’s track inspection department falsifying reports. As a result of its aggressive SafeTrack regimen, Metro said, the agency performed 3.7 times the usual amount of track repairs at roughly 2  1/2 times the cost of its usual annual track repair budget, improving “cost efficiency” by 50 percent. Metro did not immediately respond to a request for an interview on the SafeTrack overview Monday. The Federal Transit Administration, which assumed safety oversight of the rail system in October 2015, in a statement Monday night called SafeTrack a “necessary and important first step” in tackling Metro’s backlog of infrastructural issues. Still, the FTA said, there was significant work to do. Metro “must do much more to further reduce this backlog and improve its maintenance program to better ensure the safety of the Metrorail system for passengers and workers and restore the system to a state of good repair,” FTA said. The agency did not directly respond to a reporter’s question about whether it accepted Metro’s findings or agreed with its assessment that SafeTrack was “very successful.” Although supportive of SafeTrack overall, the FTA has raised concerns over the quality of work being performed through the course of the program. Federal inspectors noted in initial inspection reports that SafeTrack repairs weren’t being conducted as effectively as possible and some problems, such as loose fasteners, were being overlooked. A later report from the Government Accountability Office concluded that Metro had rushed into the planning of SafeTrack, leaving the year-long program less effective than it could have been — in part because advance inspections were “not comprehensive and did not collect detailed data on the condition of all track infrastructure.” Metro officials defended the program at the time, however, saying the dilapidated state of the system’s tracks warranted urgent action. It is unknown whether the FTA is conducting its own comprehensive analysis of SafeTrack. Rob Puentes, president of the nonpartisan Eno Center for Transportation, said that compared with a year ago, Metro’s problems have stabilized. He hailed the SafeTrack findings as a beacon for the system. “The system is not up to a state of good repair or anything — they’ve cleared this backlog of some degree out,” he said. “But we no longer have this crisis of confidence — that’s clearly a win for Metro.” Still, he said, the agency has significant work ahead to repair its public perception. Pressed on how the average rider should respond to news that significantly fewer rail ties are rotted out compared with a year ago, for example, he said Metro has to earn back trust by improving service. “It’s going to take more, and the proof is going to be in the pudding. If delays and safety are palpably and tangibly improved, that’ll take care of itself,” Puentes said. Further, an independent, rather than internal, overview would buoy Metro’s case that SafeTrack was a success, he said. Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans said he was pleased to see the agency’s report, but he plans to press officials at Thursday’s board meeting on when reliability will improve. “It’s really basic here; you got to fix the tracks. Those statistics would indicate that we’ve made substantial progress,” Evans said. But he went on to say that with safety under control, the focus is now on when the breakdowns will end. “The thing . . . that riders are concerned about, I’m concerned about, everyone is concerned about — on a very basic level — is reliability,” he said. SafeTrack is scheduled to conclude with its 16th surge on June 25, following a nine-day shutdown from Shady Grove to Twinbrook on the Red Line. Then, beginning in August, Metro will conduct three work blitzes over the next year to rehabilitate crossovers, where trains switch tracks. The work will involve shutting down portions of the Yellow, Green and Red lines for 10 weekdays at a time. And the agency will launch a preventive maintenance program, bolstered by a reduction in service hours, that aims to keep the system in a state of good repair. “The most important lesson of all from SafeTrack is how vital it is to maintain a proactive capital renewal and maintenance program,” Metro concludes in its report.

Paul Ryan claims Obama makes Carter looks like the ‘good old days.’ Not so much.

"Simply put, the Jimmy Carter years look like the good old days compared to where we are right now," Paul Ryan quipped to a crowd at East Carolina University on Sunday night. As ABC News has found, some of the data Ryan invoked to support this conclusion is just wrong. Ryan said in 1980, 330,000 businesses filed for bankruptcy; it was more like 44,000. He said that 1.4 million businesses filed for bankruptcy in 2011; it was about 48,000. The numbers Ryan used were personal bankruptcy figures, which he passed off as business bankruptcies. But what about Ryan's broader claim, that, in his words, Obama "can't tell you that you're better off"? It's difficult to substantiate. By just about every metric, the economy is doing better than it was in January 2009 (that is, of course, a low bar to clear, as the economy was falling off a cliff in January 2009). And while Obama's tenure has seen consistent, albeit insufficient, economic progress, things actually got much worse over Carter's tenure. Ryan mentioned that the unemployment rate is higher under Obama than it was at this point in Carter's term. Very true - but this leaves out that the rate is currently falling, whereas it was rising under Carter:       But one thing all the above data shows is that, Ryan's protestations aside, Carter's term actually saw the economic situation deteriorate whereas Obama's has seen it improve. It hasn't improved enough, or quickly enough, but the trajectory is positive. For Carter, by contrast, things were getting worse and fast.

Kevin Stricklin: Working to prevent deadly coal mine accidents

When disaster strikes in America’s coal mines, Kevin Stricklin and his team at the Mine Safety and Health Administration race to the scene to lead dangerous rescue and recovery operations, calling on years of training and experience. On a daily basis, Stricklin, administrator for Coal Mine Safety and Health at the Department of Labor, works with colleagues to enforce safety rules and improve industry compliance, aiming to prevent deadly accidents from occurring in the first place. During the past several years, Stricklin has been leading the agency’s efforts to step up enforcement, work that is proving effective. The number of coal miners who died in accidents last year was the lowest recorded in U.S. history, while the number of chronic violators of coal mine regulations plummeted, even as the mine safety administration ramped up inspections. “Kevin’s everyday job is overseeing the enforcement program for mines across the United States,” said Joseph Main, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health. “Nobody has achieved as much as Kevin. He is a tough enforcer, but he has a lot of credibility that allows him to deal effectively with all of the stakeholders.” In the 1990s, coal mining deaths averaged about 45 annually. Last year, only 16 coal miners died on the job, and the number of mines with chronic violations dropped to 12, down from 51 in 2010. During that same period, citations against mines fell by more than 33,500, down from 96,352, even as inspections increased—showing a marked improvement in compliance with safety rules. Enforcement was increased following the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia, when 29 of 31 coal miners were killed following an explosion of methane gas fed by excessive coal dust. Investigations later revealed that the mine had a long list of flagrant, uncorrected, safety violations. “Since the Upper Big Branch mine explosion, there have been a ton of reforms to make mines safer,” said Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. “Kevin has been very involved in carrying out initiatives to improve mine safety following that disaster.” These changes have included inspections four times a year, surprise inspections targeting coal mines with repeat violations, and the use of a “pattern of violations” program that identifies habitual safety lapses and subjects mine operators to extra scrutiny and possible shutdowns. The mine administration also is enforcing a new rule instituted last summer to reduce coal dust in the mines. Deputy Secretary of Labor Chris Lu said Stricklin and his staff of inspectors and safety experts have made “significant strides since the West Virginia mine disaster. These inspectors are in the trenches every day helping coal mine operators improve their environment and safety.” In addition to addressing safety, Stricklin and colleagues are credited with playing pivotal roles in rescue and recovery efforts after mine disasters, crafting innovations to save lives. In 2002, for example, when nine miners got trapped underground after Pennsylvania’s Quecreek coal mine flooded, Stricklin and a colleague devised a plan to inject compressed air into a 6.5-inch hole rescuers drilled to provide oxygen to the miners and prevent the water level from rising any further. The miners eventually were hoisted to the surface one by one, via a capsule another colleague helped to design. “Kevin and his team have been at the front lines of over 100 mining disasters, communicating with concerned families and leading rescue and recovery operations,” Perez said. “Heroic is the only way I can describe it.” George Fesak, who recently retired as the mine safety administration’s director of technical support, said, “Kevin and his team are able to maintain their calm and their cool and, when required, use technical and innovative approaches. This team has made mine rescue much more systematic and controlled.” Stricklin, whose father and both grandfathers were coal miners, said that when it comes to mine safety and rescue operations, “The buck stops with me. “Our charge is to make mines as safe and healthy as possible for miners through laws and enforcement and plans that mines have to comply with,” he said. “Our objective is for each miner to go home as safe and as healthy at the end of the day as they started at the beginning of the day.” _This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to the Fed Page of The Washington Post to read about other federal workers who are making a difference. To recommend a Federal Player of the Week, contact us at fedplayers@ourpublicservice.org._

Report says 99% of feds ‘fully successful’ or better at work. Is that credible?

Is it likely that 99 percent of staffers in any workplace are “fully successful” or better?  GAO looked at 2013 ratings for almost 1.2 million staffers, not including Senior Executive Service (SES) members. The study found that only 0.3 percent were rated as minimally successful and 0.1 percent as unacceptable.  “The transparency and credibility of the performance management process is enhanced when meaningful performance distinctions are made — it helps ensure that promotion, pay, bonus, staffing, and other rewards and recognition decisions are based on employees’ performance and results,” GAO said. Feds deserve much respect, but rating more than 99 percent as fully successful strains credibility. It diminishes the truly successful and could deny the less successful the assistance they need to improve. The report gives a boost to those who seek to overhaul the civil service system, which critics say is short on employee accountability. Federal employee unions have not been anxious to embrace civil service reform, though there are indications that is changing. “The system is obviously not working in that it’s not providing meaningful differentiation between solid employees and truly exceptional ones,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, which studies the federal workforce. “It’s not being implemented consistently or with the original intent of what it means to be ‘outstanding’ or ‘fully successful.’”  Citing the Partnership’s Best Places to Work in the Federal Government report, which is based on a federal survey of government employees, Stier said many staffers are not satisfied with the rating system. “Only 30.8 percent of non-SES staff—the group highlighted in the GAO report—responded positively to the question ‘In my work unit, differences in performance are recognized in a meaningful way,’” Stier said. If the 99 percent figure exaggerates, is it the fault of the evaluation system or the evaluators, the supervisors who rate their staffs? Both, says William R. Dougan, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “Most managers have a difficult time with frank and honest discussions about performance,” Dougan said. “I do believe that by and large a very large percentage of federal employees are doing a fine job. Is it 99 percent? I’m not convinced. I think that’s a little high.” Dougan also pointed to a confusing system with various rating tiers that differ among agencies. “That’s part of the problem,” he said. Dougan supports performance management and appraisal system changes now being implemented for Defense Department employees. The changes call for improved manager training, continuous performance monitoring and consistency among Pentagon agencies. J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said the high ratings might be the positive byproduct of another part of the civil service system that is often criticized — the lengthy hiring process. “Could it be that the careful scrutiny and open competition among applicants for federal jobs produces a workforce of highly skilled, responsible, productive employees? Cox asked. “If agencies take care to hire the best possible people, and in turn almost all of those people do at least everything they’re asked to do in a satisfactory manner, where is the problem?”  Other employee groups have blasted the bill for “opening the door to partisan political abuse in myriad ways” against senior executives. AFGE did not respond to detailed questions about its support of the legislation, but it has said it “worked diligently with Congress and the Administration to defend employees’ basic right to due process, and have achieved vast improvements to critical parts of the bill as a result. For that reason we support passage of the Senate bill.” While civil service reform is starting to move, the goal should not be to lower the number of workers who are rated fully successful, just for numbers sake. “It should be to build a performance management system that provides greater accountability and greater communication with employees about what they can do to be successful,” Stier said. “The best performance management systems are those that allow for real-time, ongoing, two-way communication about how an employee is doing and how they can improve.”

Is Metro’s ridership ‘death spiral’ starting to stabilize?

The upside to Metro’s most recent reports on the financial and operational state of the system? Things could be worse. Documents released Monday in advance of this week’s board meeting offer an updated picture on how things are going at Metro — and  suggest that things may be stabilizing, ever-so-slightly.  But the ridership gap between fiscal years 2016 and 2017 has gotten smaller since the beginning of this year. At the end of December, the difference between the two years was a whopping 12 percent. So, what changed? It helped that January had no scheduled SafeTrack work, and also that the Jan. 21 Women’s March on Washington brought record numbers of riders to the system on a Saturday. (Even so, there was no Cherry Blossom Festival “bump” in March this year, because a surprise cold snap took a toll on the peak bloom.) Other aspects of the financial report indicate that things are, in the short term, at least not getting worse. Metro won’t need to go back to the District, Maryland and Virginia for more money to cover this year’s operating costs —the potential for which had been raised earlier this year in the face of steep ridership losses. Agency officials expect to be able to balance the budget for the remainder of this year largely because of the elimination of hundreds of jobs and plans to tap into a reserve fund that exists because of a previous year’s slight surplus. “Management cost reduction actions have offset most of the revenue losses to date, and the year-end deficit forecast has improved by $37 million from the previous update,” Metro’s financial staff wrote in the report. “But aggressive efforts must continue in order to balance the budget.”  The report was optimistic that this (very) modest upward trend would continue in the coming months. “Efforts to reduce bus early arrivals, completion of SafeTrack, and adjusted police allocations will improve motivators of customer satisfaction,” the report said. Still, both of those performance measures remain below Metro’s target of 85 percent customer satisfaction. “Motivators for reduced satisfaction included on-time performance and consistency of buses arriving at expected times, customer perceptions of personal safety at bus stops and onboard buses, vehicle cleanliness and climate control and operator courtesy,” Metro officials said.

Which cruise ship library is right for you?

A few decades ago, a nicely appointed library was one of a cruise ship’s star attractions. But then came climbing walls, ice-skating rinks, hand-carved carousels, 4-D theaters, zip lines and surfing simulators. Plus e-readers, tablets and smartphones. That spacious mahogany library stuffed with thousands of volumes suddenly had lots of competition. Some lines, such as Disney, which launched in the late 1990s, decided to forego libraries altogether. Others, including Carnival and Seabourn, dressed them up with wine bars and coffee stations. And a few, such as Cunard and Oceania, have stayed with tradition. John Money, co-owner of Ocean Books, has been designing and supplying ship libraries since the 1970s and still works with several lines, including Silversea, Cunard and Oceania. Even he is resigned to the effect that technology and competition for attention and dollars have had on the old library model. “There is a revenue manager on board every ship, and they need to get the maximum amount of cash from each passenger,” Money said, noting that libraries typically are not big money-makers. Technology has also chipped away at the ship library concept. “Even I read on my iPad now,” Money said. Linda Garrison, who has sailed on about 125 cruises in her 15-plus years as cruise writer for About.com, has also noticed the shrinking space devoted to ship libraries and the increasing number of passengers toting e-readers. And she’s observed something that seems counterintuitive: Oftentimes, the bigger the ship, the smaller the library. “Large cruise ships just have too many things to do, and most of their guests are not on vacation to sit in a quiet space reading a book,” Garrison said. “On the flip side, smaller luxury ships without a lot of onboard activities or entertainment often have larger libraries.” So what’s a library-loving cruise-goer to do? We’ve taken a look at all the major and a few smaller lines popular with Americans to separate the book-heavy from the tech-savvy from the let’s-just-party. The good news: There is something for everyone. ● Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2 has the largest library at sea, with about 10,000 volumes: 8,400 in English, 800 in German and the rest in Japanese, Spanish and French. Staffed by full-time librarians, the collection holds a wide variety of materials, including bestsellers, classics and travel guides. Lush carpeting, leather sofas and armchairs, rich wood-and-glass shelves and semi-private Internet stations would be the envy of any public library. The two-deck-high libraries aboard the line’s two other ships, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria, also get high marks, holding approximately 8,000 and 7,000 volumes, respectively, in various languages. ● Oceania Cruises operates several luxurious ships built by now-defunct Renaissance Cruises and known for their opulent libraries. The line’s four sister ships — Regatta, Insignia, Nautica and Sirena — have been totally refurbished but without losing the flavor of their English-style libraries, with fireplaces, plush wing-backed chairs and painted dome ceilings. The collections each offer more than 2,000 books, including destination-specific travel guides, bestselling mysteries and classic literature. ● American Queen Steamboat Company’s 436-passenger American Queen may not be a huge ship, but it boasts two libraries with thoughtful collections based on the rivers it plies. The Riverlorian library is a collection of about 400 books under lock-and-key that passengers can sign out. It includes volumes on rivers and riverboats, American history, Native Americans, Lewis and Clark, the Civil War and Southern and Cajun cultures, plus several dozen books by or about Mark Twain. The collection in the opulent Mark Twain Gallery library, which features Tiffany lamps and mahogany-accented ceilings, offers similar Americana-based books, plus a selection of Time-Life American Wilderness books, travel guides to states that the American Queen visits and even a few donated novels. ● The handsomely appointed library aboard Silversea’s 100-passenger Silver Galapagos features more than 300 books devoted to Charles Darwin, the Galapagos Islands and evolution, including several copies of Darwin’s landmark works “On the Origin of Species” and “The Voyage of the Beagle.” The library aboard this expedition cruise ship, which sails exclusively among the Galapagos Islands, also offers an extensive collection of maps and charts of the archipelago. ● Holland America is considered one of the old-school lines when it comes to ship libraries. Some of its larger ships carry as many as 4,000 books, and book clubs are offered on longer cruises. Its libraries hold the usual array of genres, but the Elliott Bay Book Company of Seattle, which supplies the books, also pays special attention to matching topics to each ship’s itinerary. For example, Alaska ships offer Alaska-themed reading material, including travel guides. The Koningsdam, which launched in April, takes this concept to a new level, with its entire collection — travel guides, atlases and coffee-table books — linked to its European and Caribbean destinations. ● Azamara Club Cruises’ two sister ships, Azamara Quest and Azamara Journey, boast libraries, called Drawing Rooms, that retain a traditional feel. But recent and ongoing extensive renovations cast a more contemporary vibe. Dark wood has been painted white, and guests can page through Assouline coffee-table books, such as a massive hot-pink tome about Barbie & Ken. Expanded technology is one of the focal points of the recent renovations, with fun interactive features now expanded to areas outside the library. Digital tabletops that allow passengers to make their own postcards and post to social media can be found in the Drawing Room and in the new Living Room area. And, in Deck Four’s concierge area, a 98-inch touch screen with a world map prompts guests to touch tiles to view videos, photos, destination information and day-by-day voyage itineraries. ● Crystal Cruises’ Crystal Symphony doesn’t skimp on books in its nearly 700-square-foot traditionally decorated library. The 5,000-book collection covers everything from poetry to sports to whodunits. It also offers 2,000 DVDs and audio books that can be borrowed. But those who want a little more than a sit-down with a good read can head to the ship’s Computer University@Sea, where a team of techies offer complimentary lessons on topics ranging from basic computer skills to advanced Web design. The ship even boasts a technology concierge, whose job is to enlighten passengers on the ins and outs of iPads, iPhones, GPS devices, etc. ● Want a little wine to go with that novel? Head to Carnival Cruise Line’s Carnival Breeze, Carnival Sunshine or the brand new Carnival Vista. Each library is a small with 200 books. But the cozy space comes with something extra: Pull out that Sail & Sign card, swipe it in the self-serve wine dispenser and enjoy a nice Cab with that romance novel. Wines are dispensed in two-, four- and six-ounce pours, with prices ranging from $2.25 for a liberal tasting of Super Tuscan to $15 for a full glass of Riesling. ● The Seabourn Odyssey, launched in 2009, was the line’s first ship to incorporate its library in a central hub “designed to encourage sociability.” The area surrounding the guest services desk includes a 1,000-book library, shops, an outdoor terrace and a coffee bar. Books cover a wide variety of topics, from natural history to fiction, and the collection includes a UNESCO reference section as part of the line’s partnership with the United Nations agency. Velvet-covered armchairs, drape-covered windows and computer stations give it a relaxed living-room feel. ******Carol Sottili** is a regular contributor to The Washington Post’s travel section.

GAO study notes ‘revolving door’ at Coast Guard

_Thomas Heath is away, but we found some newsy tidbits to pass on in his absence._ More than half of the nearly 40 high-ranking **Coast Guard** officials who left the service between 2006 and 2010 received compensation from Coast Guard contractors at some point between 2006 and 2011, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. Twelve of the 22 compensated were paid by major Coast Guard contractors, defined as those that received more than $10 million in contract obligations in 2011. Furthermore, three-quarters of those 12 officials had positions that involved developing new business. The study is an annual exercise performed by the GAO in response to congressional worries about what’s often dubbed the “revolving door” between government and industry. “Congress has been concerned about contractors hiring former government officials because these individuals can be put in a unique position to make or influence decisions that positively or negatively affect the relationships between contractors and the government,” the report adds. In a response to the GAO, a Department of Homeland Security official said the department is “pleased to note that GAO found the DHS Hotline, Coast Guard Investigative Service, and GAO’s FraudNet had not received any allegations of violations of post-government employee restrictions for any of these officials.” **— Marjorie Censer** The new year is beginning with a boon for Rockville-based **CytImmune**. The biotechnology firm, which develops cancer treatments, will partner with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to test whether CytImmune can use a nanoparticle of gold to carry a cancer-fighting compound being developed by AstraZeneca directly to cancerous tumors in patients. “By combining CytImmune’s proprietary nanotechnology with AstraZeneca’s oncology compound, AstraZeneca and CytImmune have the opportunity to create a cancer therapy that may be widely applicable to many solid tumors, which may help improve patient outcomes and positively impact cancer care,” **Lawrence Tamarkin** , CytImmune’s chief executive, said in a statement. The technology has already been studied in a clinical trial at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, where scientists found that CytImmune’s nanoparticles helped deliver other cancer-fighting molecules to malignant tumors rather than healthy tissue. Founded in 1988, CytImmune employs six people. The company has struggled to secure funding over the years, like many other life science companies, relying primarily on money from wealthy backers and government grants, Tamarkin said. **— Steven Overly** **DC Dosas** , the first pop-up restaurant to complete the **StartUp Kitchen** program, has found a permanent home: the **Whole Foods** in Foggy Bottom. The restaurant, which specializes in a crepe-like South Indian dish, is the brainchild of Georgetown resident **Priya Ammu**. DC Dosas had a soft opening earlier this month and will officially open in Whole Foods’ prepared foods department on Jan. 9. “We are always looking for new and creative foods to offer our customers,” said **Defausha Hampton** , a spokeswoman for Whole Foods. The next round of StartUp Kitchen, an eight-week incubation program that gives aspiring restaurateurs a crash course in running their own business, will take place at the **Hello Cupcake** in Capitol Hill. Applications will be accepted beginning Jan. 4. **— Abha Bhattarai** **Ben** and **Daniel Miller** , the Generation Y sons of charismatic Georgetown developer **Herb Miller** , have attracted attention with their crowdsource real estate businesses **Popularise** and **Fundrise**. The first encourages online feedback for development projects, while the latter allows individuals to buy shares in real estate projects in their neighborhoods. Fundrise is being used by Teach for America to help it develop a new D.C. campus. “They’re not paying us,” Ben Miller said. “We’re doing this because this needs to happen. This is important.” The Miller boys like H Street NE and have purchased the **AutoZone** store there, though they haven’t determined a way of relocating it so they can develop the site. What to do in the meantime? They’ve submitted a proposal to the District to use Fundrise to develop the former R.L. Christian Library, at 1300 H St. NE. Sounding every bit like his pop, Miller said choosing a company that will bring on investors from the neighborhood was the right thing to do. “It’s the kind of thing the city should be embracing,” he said. **— Jonathan O’Connell** For some lawyers at **Hogan Lovells** , it’s $1,200 an hour. The Washington law firm ranked second in a National Law Journal survey on law firm billing rates. The survey ranked 55 major U.S. law firms by the median hourly rate charged by attorneys. The $1,200 figure was the highest hourly billing rate at Hogan, while the median rate was $625. Hogan ranked just under legal giant **DLA Piper** , which reported the same highest hourly rate and a slightly higher median rate of $635. A handful of other Washington firms also made the list, including **Dickstein Shapiro** , which charged $1,250 on the high end and a median rate of $580, and **Patton Boggs** , which charged $990 on the high end and a median rate of $550. **— Catherine Ho**

Why holding the piracy statute’s life sentence unconstitutional was a mistake

Congress has prescribed a mandatory life sentence or worse for piracy since 1790. At first the penalty was a mandatory minimum of death: in the late 1800s Congress set it to life at hard labor, and then in 1909 to life. Last week, a U.S. District Court judge found it unconstitutional as applied to some Somali pirates, in United States v. Said. As I mentioned earlier, I think the result is wrong, and will outline some problems with the opinion, in no particular order.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Judge Jackson thinks that under the Eighth Amendment, a mandatory life sentence is “grossly disproportionate” as applied to the current defendants, because while they did attack a U.S. Navy destroyer (in the mistaken belief it was a merchant ship) with rifles and RPGs, they were wildly unsuccessful, and did not manage to hurt anyone. Judge Jackson argues that attempts are typically treated differently from completed offenses in federal law. But in all the examples he sites, the statutes defining the primary conduct explicitly treat attempt as a lesser offense. The federal piracy statute, however, incorporates by reference the international law definition of piracy, which folds attempts into completed offenses. Judge Jackson says the defendants’ conduct is less culpable than those of other pirates sentenced to lesser terms – but all those cases involved plea bargains, and there a perhaps a dozen relevant cases at all. A lower sentence for a plea bargain implies the permissibility of a higher one for defendants who put the government to the burden of trial. As an original matter, the Eight Amendment holding is even weaker. The First Congress imposed the death penalty for piracy, and it was applied without any constitutional question. Yet the Framers knew that the conduct that constitutes piracy was, objectively, more similar to robbery than murder or other more culpable crimes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University For example, Thomas Jefferson, in his proposed reform of Virginia’s penal laws, suggested eliminating the death penalty for piracy, and instead making the penalty similar to the one for aggravated robbery. His approach found little purchase because punishment is not just about culpability, but about enforcement difficulties, or to put it differently, about the vulnerability of the victim. The high seas are a place outside the normal operation of law enforcement, yet where most of the world’s commerce transits. This requires tougher penalties. Indeed, the entire crew of a pirate vessel was equally guilty of the crime, and liable to the death penalty, down to the ship’s cook – people who, unlike the defendants here, had no participation in any boarding efforts whatsoever. Indeed, many pirates were sympathetic figures, forced into crime by their shipmates. Yet no one ever questioned the constitutionality of applying the statue to them. Certainly it was recognized that punishing low-level pirates by death was very harsh – but the harshness was part of the point, to deter a hard-to-police crime. Instead, presidential pardons were relied on to mitigate any harsh effects. The Constitution explicitly authorizes Congress to punish “piracies on the high seas” – along with treason, it is one of the only two crimes mentioned by Founding document. The power to define and punish reflects the uncertainty of determining, from abstract principles, the proper punishment for international crimes. This suggests judicial interference in Congress’s penal scheme is particularly counter-indicated for such offenses. The Court noted, correctly, that the U.S. is a far outlier in its punishment for piracy among other countries that have prosecuted the crime in recent years. But as I point out in my empirical study of piracy sentencing, it is not clear how much that means, because most of those countries have less punitive legal systems overall. Their punishments for most crimes are lower than in the U.S. Piracy prosecution has been heavily dominated by Western European countries and two regional states that they have hired to help them; the piracy sentences are generally consistent with these jurisdictions’ overall punitive approach.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Making ambulances safer for patients and EMTs

“Ambulance Accident Leads to Three Fatalities.” Under this 2014 headline was a tragic, disturbingly familiar news story: A medic, patient and passenger all died when the ambulance driver lost control on an icy road and rolled the ambulance. While the EMT driver survived, those in the patient compartment did not. The accident occurred in Texas, but it could have happened anywhere. James Green, a persuasive engineer with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), wants to make it safer for anyone in the back of an ambulance and is working to reduce the hazards. Alarmed by statistics revealing the vulnerability of EMTs and patients in crashes, Green spent years building partnerships with ambulance manufacturers to crash-test their products and devise improvements. His work with the public–private team has led him to propose 10 crash safety standards or recommended practices for ambulances and their equipment. The proposals have already triggered some safety reforms within the ambulance manufacturing industry and are under consideration by National Association of State EMS Officials. “Manufacturers are already stepping up to the plate and taking advantage of the science,” said Dawn Castillo, director of the Division of Safety Research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The progress that has been made is remarkable.” Historically, ambulances have been designed, built and sold without crash certification testing, and most fall under state rather than federal regulatory authority. Although they often travel at high speeds, a lot of their equipment isn’t bolted down, and patients and emergency crew are on cots and seating that don’t meet automotive crash-testing requirements. Green’s interest in the safety project was spurred in part by Bureau of Labor Statistics data that showed EMS personnel involved in crashes had a fatality rate more than twice the national average for all workers. NIOSH also knew from its own earlier testing that ambulances’ structural integrity was compromised in crashes at 30 miles per hour. Yet, unlike with passenger cars, no national crash safety standards have existed for the ambulances, cots, patient compartment seating or medical equipment mounts. “I compare it to the airport. You’ve just gotten off the plane and into a rental shuttle. You are sitting on bench seats, the luggage is sitting on the shelf next to you with no safety compartment, and there are no seatbelts,” Green said. “In an industry with 800,000 workers, both worker and patient safety becomes a great concern. Improving safety can help any and every American at some point in their lives.” Green initially drew restraint system manufacturers to the table with a fairly modest goal—to learn from what the military had done to protect personnel transported in helicopters. “I had come from a Navy side where we had workers in the back of helicopters standing up. They used a restraint that allowed them to sit or stand,” he said. Eventually the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) joined his project and enlisted a group of first responders. When DHS staffers sat down with the EMTs, firefighters and police to discuss their experiences, the group asked for safety standards. Green decided to figure out how to make the back compartment of an ambulance stronger. NIOSH began crash-testing to learn what happened when equipment and crash dummies were subjected to rear, side, and front and rollover accident forces. Green, meanwhile, continued to add new players to his team, drawing in more than a dozen commercial interests with a stake in the ambulance industry. “Seeing their commitment to this project and trust they have in the government has really been a highlight of my career,” he said. “We were able to build these standards throughout the industry, where there weren’t any requirements to do it. It was all voluntary. We were able to do the groundwork needed to provide confidence to the industry that we weren’t there to hurt them, and we were able to do it collaboratively.” While the federal government funded the actual crash-testing, manufacturers supplied engineering and testable products. That more than doubled the amount of direct funding for the project. “Jim’s leadership throughout this process is what has made this,” says Steve Spata, technical services manager with the Association for the Work Truck Industry. Green’s long-term goal is to bring ambulances up to the same level of safety found in passenger cars. He and some of his partners are working with state EMS officials in pushing for adoption of his proposed standards. Already, though, they are driving positive changes and seeing new crashworthy products come on the market, although wholesale change will not occur until old-style ambulances are replaced with new ones, and until individual states begin to adopt the new standards. “Jim is dedicated to this project, but also dedicated to the community,” says Jim Grove, senior advisor to the DHS Science and Technology Directorate. “I’m proud of what Jim does. He realizes how important it is.” _This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to the Fed Page of The Washington Post to read about other federal workers who are making a difference. To recommend a Federal Player of the Week, contact us at fedplayers@ourpublicservice.org._

GAO cites Homeland Security’s progress in fixing management problems, praises Johnson

The Department of Homeland Security has made significant progress in fixing its numerous management challenges, and Secretary Jeh Johnson has shown “exemplary commitment” in improving the agency charged with safeguarding Americans, government auditors said. In an update of its “high-risk” list – government agencies deemed vulnerable to fraud, waste or mismanagement – the U.S. Government Accountability Office said DHS has improved since its 2013 report in key areas such as financial management, IT acquisitions and senior leadership. Although DHS remains on the high-risk list, GAO said it has “fully addressed” nine of 30 high-risk areas and made progress toward addressing the other 21. _[Senate moves closer to a deal on DHS funding]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The report singled out Johnson, who took over DHS in December 2013, and DHS deputy secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, saying they “have continued to demonstrate exemplary commitment and support for addressing the department’s management challenges.’’ The report was released Feb. 11 but was highlighted on Tuesday by DHS, with Johnson issuing a statement calling it “a huge step forward.’’ It was also welcome good news for an agency that is not only facing the threat of a partial shutdown this weekend over a funding dispute with congressional Republicans but has also been riddled with management problems. Among those challenges have been low morale and high turnover of personnel, issues that date back to DHS’s creation during the George W. Bush administration.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico DHS has been on the high-risk list since it began operations in 2003, GAO said, because of the massive challenges in welding 22 separate government agencies into one. “Further,’’ the GAO report said, “failure to effectively address DHS’s management and mission risks could have serious consequences for U.S. national and economic security.’’ Though the report was optimistic about the department’s progress, it did note that DHS “continues to face significant management challenges that hinder the department’s ability to meet its missions.’’ It cited the low morale, difficulties in tracking major acquisitions and the lack of a “modernized financial management systems.’’ Johnson vowed to continue working on the problems, saying that “management reform is one of my New Year’s resolutions for this Department….our good work must and will continue.’’

Traffic deaths in United States are at lowest point in 62 years

Deaths behind the wheel of an automobile fell last year to the lowest level since the Truman administration, but there was an increase in fatalities among bicyclists, pedestrians, motorcycle riders and big-rig truck drivers, according to federal figures released Monday. Overall, highway deaths dropped to 32,367, almost two percent lower than they were in 2010, and a 26 percent decline since a peak in 2005. Maryland outpaced the nation with a 2.2 percent decrease, but deaths rose by 3.2 percent in Virginia and 13 percent in the District. The downward national trend began before the recession took some drivers off the roads, and it accelerated last year. It has been attributed to several factors, including increased use of air bags, seat belts and other vehicle safety features, improved roadway designs, and increasing awareness of the perils of driving drunk. “In the past several decades, we’ve seen remarkable improvements in both the way motorists behave on our roadways and in the safety of the vehicles they drive,” said David L. Strickland, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. He said police enforcement of seat belt and sobriety laws have played a key role. But there already have been indications that the downward trend has ended. Preliminary data for this year indicated that fatalities increased 13.4 percent in the first three months of this year, and the total for April, May and June was 5.3 percent higher than in 2011. “As we look to the future, it will be more important than ever to build on this progress by continuing to tackle head-on issues like seat belt use, drunk driving, and driver distraction,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who has made distracted driving the cornerstone of his safety agenda. The NHTSA data said the number of people killed in distraction-related accidents increased almost 2 percent, to 3,331, from 2010 to 2011. Federal and highway safety advocates said the increase may reflect better reporting of the distraction issue than an actual increase in fatalities. The number of people injured in distraction-linked crashes declined by 7 percent, to 387,000 people in 2011, the federal agency said. The evolution in travel patterns, relaxed safety standards and an improving economy were singled out for three of the areas in which fatalities bucked the downward trend. The number of bicyclists killed increased by 8.7 percent and pedestrian deaths were up 3 percent. “Our culture is beginning to move away from driving and toward healthier and greener modes of transportations,” said Jonathan Adkins, deputy executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “We need to be able to accommodate all these forms of transportation safely.” Adkins said a more-than-2-percent increase in motorcycle deaths was attributed to the fact that “state legislatures continue to listen to anti-helmet rider groups and ignore clear research supporting helmet use and laws.” The largest increase was a 20 percent jump in the number of drivers and passengers of large trucks killed in accidents. “There are more questions than answers about what is occurring here,” Adkins said, “but this could be in part to a strengthening economy.” The data, collected under a federal system called the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), indicated that there were 1.1 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2011, down from 1.11 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2010. The FARS statistics are based on numbers collected by each state, and Adkins cautioned that preliminary data indicates that the decline in highway deaths may end this year. “Based on what we are hearing from states, we fully expect an increase in fatalities for 2012,” he said. In 2011, 36 states had fewer traffic fatalities, led by Connecticut (100 fewer fatalities), North Carolina (93 fewer), Tennessee (86 fewer), Ohio (64 fewer) and Michigan (53 fewer). In Maryland, there were 11 fewer deaths than the 496 the previous year, while Virginia saw 24 more people die in 2011 than the 740 who died in 2010, and deaths in the District increased by three to 27.

Will the long airport lines of spring break 2016 be back again this year?

If you’re already bracing for a long airport security line during the spring break travel season, then you must remember last year. You do, don’t you? That’s when Transportation Security Administration screening wait times doubled under the weight of tighter security and swelling crowds. On just one day in mid-March, 6,800 American Airlines customers reportedly missed their flights, thanks to the lengthy TSA lines. The agency assigned to protect America’s transportation systems responded with a 10-point plan to speed up airport lines, and the lines abated by the end of the summer. During the winter holidays, the agency estimates that 99 percent of air travelers waited in security lines for less than half an hour and that 95 percent waited less than 15 minutes. But with spring break 2017 in our sights, air travelers are wondering if history will repeat itself. And if there’s anything they can do to avoid getting stuck in line. They’re air travelers like Beverly Byrum, a nurse from Louisville, who got a little preview of a worst-case scenario when she returned from a trip to Mexico through Atlanta in January. “The immigration lines were 500 travelers deep, then another long line for TSA,” she says. “The anger in the crowd was growing. Many people missed connections.” Although Byrum doesn’t entirely blame the TSA for the slowdown, she says it was a contributing factor. The TSA hasn’t announced any new efforts aimed directly at easing lines during the busy spring travel weeks. Then again, this is a different spring and there’s a new administration in Washington. Change is definitely in the air. One of the solutions that could be quickly put into place if new lines crop up: private security screeners. “That has long been a GOP-backed solution for inefficiency in the security process,” says Anthony DeMaio, a lobbyist with O’Neill and Associates in Washington. He expects to see a renewed push for increased privatization of TSA screeners. Already, more than 20 airports participate in the TSA’s Screening Partnership Program, which allows private companies to conduct airport security screening. Agency observers also expect a renewed push to promote TSA PreCheck, the agency’s expedited screening program. And while hyping the pricey program during a busy travel season may seem opportunistic, PreCheck’s advantages are undeniable. Bryan Cunningham, who owns an aviation services company in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and is a frequent air traveler, says PreCheck membership, which costs $85 for five years, is “absolutely, definitely” worth the money. TSA’s internal metrics indicate that 97 percent of passengers with PreCheck clearance waited less than five minutes in line during the last holiday period. “When you’re checking in, it cuts the wait time down by 80 percent, compared to a conventional line,” Cunningham says. “Plus, you don’t have to take off your shoes or remove your computer most of the time.” The benefits are especially clear to inbound international travelers, who can use a kiosk and bypass the lengthy lines after immigration — the same lines Byrum had to contend with in Atlanta. The TSA says it is taking the threat of longer lines seriously. Although its plan to ease congestion, put in place almost a year ago, has worked so far, “we continue to expand on some of the initiatives,” says Bruce Anderson, a TSA spokesman. For example, the agency plans to utilize overtime and expedite the hiring of screeners this spring. It also plans to deploy more K-9 teams and, over the long term, to invest in research and development in technologies that will speed up screening. Will it be enough? Kevin Mitchell, who runs the Business Travel Coalition, an advocacy group in Radnor, Pa., that represents corporate travel managers, thinks we may be headed for a replay of spring break 2016 unless more is done quickly. In fact, he wants the National Guard deployed during the busy air travel weeks to help move things along. The only thing that would permanently reduce the lines is to remove the clutter — specifically, the carry-on bags passengers try to drag through the screening area in an effort to avoid checked-baggage fees. “To encourage travelers to check bags and reduce the number of items TSA agents need to inspect, Congress should pass legislation that would require airlines to temporarily reduce baggage fees by 50 percent,” Mitchell says. That’s a long shot, but Congress has an opportunity to do just that in the upcoming Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Bill. While it may be too late for this year, there’s always spring break 2018. Until then, passengers flying in March and early April should consider arriving at the airport at least a half-hour earlier than they normally would. “If you can, fly during nonpeak hours, and check your bags,” advises Paul Hudson, the executive director of Flyersrights.org, a nonprofit organization that advocates for air travelers. Unlike last spring break, the TSA, airlines and their passengers are flying into this busy travel period fully aware of what could happen. And if all goes as planned, the screening experience will be the least memorable part of your vacation. Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. Email him at chris@elliott.org. **Read more fromTravel:** Read past Navigator columns here

Patent lawsuits swell and watchdog says the government is to blame

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is so focused on rewarding its employees for the number of applications they review that the quality of patents they give out is in jeopardy, according to the Government Accountability Office. The result is that licenses conferring someone’s sole right to an invention are “unclear and overly broad” and vulnerable to infringement by competitors.  The patent office “does not have a consistent definition of patent quality that is clearly articulated… or fully developed measurable goals and performance indicators to guide and evaluate work towards the agency’s quality goals,” GAO said in an audit requested by Congress that has not been made public. A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post. Just the threat of litigation can deter innovators from coming up with new products, GAO found. It’s the third review in 15 months to find weaknesses in the quality of patents granted to intellectual-property focused industries like electronics and pharmaceuticals, a crucial sector of the U.S. economy that contributes more than $5 trillion a year to the gross domestic product. The government issued 326,000 patents last year, according to federal data. In a critical report on deficiencies with quality assurance, the inspector general for the Commerce Department, the patent office’s parent agency, found in April 2015 that patent officials have almost no way of knowing whether their examiners are doing a good job.   GAO, which conducted its audit from 2014 to 2016, focused on how poor patents are contributing to the recent rise in litigation. Lawsuits in federal district courts over the illegal use of inventions have exploded in recent years, with 5,000 filed in 2015, up from 2,000 in 2007, the audit said. More than 8,000 defendants faced litigation last year, up from 5,000 in 2007. Most disputes concern new computer technology and software. Patent officials began taking steps last year to address quality control, holding public forums with experts and stakeholders to get their ideas and launching a pilot program that asks a sample of the 8,300 examiners to show clearly what steps they took in their reviews.  “The more patents are correct and clear, the less confusion we’ll have in the market and the less litigation we’ll see,” Patrick Ross, the agency’s communications director, said in an interview. But GAO noted that patent officials, to improve quality, still are focusing too much on the timeliness of reviews, customer service and “process or production goals” rather than quality. And they have not tied bonuses and performance reviews to quality, which needs definition. Is a good patent broad, or clearly defined? How does it prove that the invention is novel, useful, not obvious and clearly described? In a survey auditors did of a sample of employees, one wrote that “without a working definition, management’s focus on patent quality is meaningless.”  “Without such goals and indicators, USPTO cannot determine whether it is meeting its goal of enhancing patent quality,” auditors wrote. The inventory is large: As of April, the agency had a backlog of about 550,000 pending patent applications. Reviews take 16 to 26 months. Examiners are rated largely on their production, auditors said, and they are given different times to complete reviews based on the experience of the examiner and the technical level of the field. For example, someone working on an artificial intelligence review gets an average of about 31 hours to complete it, while an application for exercise devices takes an average of 17 hours.  Timeliness and production produce bonuses: From fiscal 2009 to fiscal 2013, examiners who met these goals got an extra $6,000 a year, GAO said, citing the inspector general’s office. But they are not rated for quality work. Examiners work fast, creating “an environment where patents may be granted that do not fully meet patentability standards,” GAO found. The last time the patent office studied its production quotas was the 1970s — although several years ago, employees got another two-and-a-half hours for each review. GAO said the current system leaves makes it almost impossible to know how to get the best quality work from its staff. “We work very closely with our unions to determine the right amount of time to meet our goals,” Ross said. Last fall, he said, examiners were again given more time to review applications in some fields. GAO recommended that the agency define what is a good patent, update its performance goals for reviewers and figure out how bonuses for production may be compromising patent quality. Patent officials agreed with the recommendations. “The strength of the U.S. system relies on the granting of strong patents, ones that are truly novel and non-obvious inventions, those that are true innovations and not the product of legal gamesmanship,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who requested the audit, said in a statement. The committee has called patent office Director Michelle Lee to testify in September. Goodlatte called the hearing “an important opportunity for the Judiciary Committee to conduct the appropriate oversight to ensure that our intellectual property laws are being implemented fairly and in line with Congressional intent.”

Federal inspectors spot isolated problems on Metro tracks in April inspection reports

SafeTrack may be over, but federal regulators are still releasing inspection reports and assessments from over the course of the 13-month track overhaul project.  Here are some of the highlights: 1. Between Union Station and Gallery Place, inspectors found one spot where concrete from the tunnel ceiling appeared to have fallen onto the tracks, close to the third rail. 2. Station managers at the Medical Center, Cleveland Park and Rhode Island Avenue stations did not have printed evacuation plans to use in the case of an emergency. 3. Near the Pentagon City station, inspectors found that there was “none to severely poor” lighting inside the tunnels. 4. A newly poured grout pad was found to be defective during SafeTrack Surge 13, though all the other similar grout pads in that area met their standards. 5. Inspectors said they saw a few instances of workers on the tracks failing to wear safety glasses or train mechanics not wearing hard hats while working underneath the train. “Two employees were observed not wearing proper personal protection equipment (PPE) (i.e., hard hats) while walking under the equipment,” an inspector wrote. “This is incompliant with WMATA rule 4.5.1 which states: ‘Bump hats shall be worn while working under vehicles.’ ” Though there were certainly criticisms, the package of reports released last week appeared to be far more positive than previous inspection summaries conducted by FTA officials. Many of those April inspection summaries noted that inspectors had found no defects on the tracks. At a maintenance and inspection facility near the Shady Grove station, a federal official noted that he found the mechanics there had “extremely positive and cooperative attitudes, as well as an enthusiastic willingness to demonstrate their skills.” In a written report provided to the FTA, Metro officials also offered more explanation of why they have increasingly chosen to opt for section shutdowns, rather than single-tracking, to perform track work.  Riders raised concerns about some of these last-minute changes during later SafeTrack surges. But Metro wrote that shutdowns are the best way “to prevent the delay from rippling to other parts of the system.”  Metro officials are taking a similar tack for upcoming preventive maintenance projects that they will be performing throughout the next year.

Norovirus outbreaks make both cruise lines and passengers leery

What’s worse than being stricken with stomach flu on vacation? Maybe it’s being quarantined on a cruise ship with hundreds of other passengers suffering from the same illness. That’s what happened to Randy Fulp when he sailed to Mexico with a group of friends on the Caribbean Princess in January. An appraiser from Sacramento, Fulp is a seasoned cruiser and knows the risk of getting sick, particularly at this time of year. Cruise ships are on high alert for sightings of the Norwalk virus, also known as the norovirus or stomach flu, a highly contagious gastrointestinal illness. Still, on the third day of their vacation, Fulp’s wife, Peggy, became violently ill. “She started vomiting and having diarrhea,” he says. “It was uncontrollable.” His cousin’s wife was even unluckier. Overcome with the same sickness while on a shore excursion, she sprinted back to the ship. “She didn’t make it to her cabin before she vomited,” Fulp recalls. “Two crew members yelled at her to get to her cabin, which she was trying to do as fast as possible.” Although shipwide outbreaks are relatively common in the cruise industry, this year is off to an unusually aggressive start. There have been three high-profile incidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Fulp’s Caribbean Princess episode, a relatively minor outbreak that affected 181 of 3,102 passengers; an outbreak on Norwegian Cruise Lines’ Star, which affected 130 of 2,318 passengers, roughly the same percentage as on the Caribbean Princess; and one on Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas, which infected 634 of 3,071 passengers and was so severe that it earned the ship the nickname “Exploder of the Seas.” In a further twist, the CDC also reported that the gastrointestinal virus on the Explorer of the Seas, which it identified as the GII.4 Sydney strain, was relatively new. Amid these outbreaks, which often happen in the glare of the media spotlight, several questions have emerged about such diseased cruises. Who’s to blame for them? What are passengers owed when half a ship is quarantined? And can an infection be prevented? It seems that the only absolutely certain way to stay uninfected is to stay home. There’s no vaccine to protect you from norovirus, and simply applying a dab of antibacterial gel before eating at the buffet won’t cut it, say experts. Washing your hands frequently with soap and warm water and minding what you touch can help prevent an infection, but it’s no guarantee. “It goes back to the adage our parents and teachers drummed into us,” says Susan Rehm, vice chairman of the Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Infectious Disease. “Wash your hands and keep them away from your face.” Cruise insiders insist that the odds of getting sick are negligible. “Infection rates are very low when compared to rates on land,” says Mike McGarry, a spokesman for the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), a trade association for the cruise industry. Last year, the CDC reported only seven confirmed norovirus outbreaks, which came to just 1,238 total afflicted passengers worldwide, or 0.0059 percent of 21 million cruise passengers. In 2012, the agency reported 16 norovirus outbreaks on ships. “No industry nor facility is as tightly regulated as the cruise industry,” says Stewart Chiron, who writes a blog called The Cruise Guy. He says that the media fixation on cruise ship outbreaks distorts the truth, which is that just a fraction of passengers is infected by a gastrointestinal virus. “Media like the cruise industry because it’s very visual and attracts viewers, listeners and readers,” he notes. Critics take a different view. They claim that the risk of an infection is real and that cruise lines too often play it down. Kendall Carver, chairman of the International Cruise Victims Association, says that despite industry promises that it’s able to screen passengers for gastrointestinal illnesses and promises to sanitize ships after each outbreak, it can’t seem to control the contagion. “As the ships get bigger and bigger, the chance of an outbreak happening multiplies tremendously,” adds Carver. “It’s only going to get worse.” The cruise industry, led by CLIA, last year adopted a voluntary 10-point passenger “bill of rights,” which spelled out travelers’ right to compensation under certain circumstances, such as a mechanical failure. But the bill doesn’t specifically address a norovirus outbreak, leaving it up to a cruise line to determine how to address the inevitable complaints that arise from passengers who are infected on their vacation. The bigger the outbreak, the better your chances of securing a more generous compensation package. For example, Royal Caribbean offered passengers on the Explorer of the Seas a 50 percent refund and a 50 percent future cruise certificate in the amount of the cruise fare paid for the sailing, according to cruise line spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez. Fulp says that Princess issued him a credit for his port fees in Belize, which came to about $100 per person, and a 20 percent future cruise credit. Jim Walker, a maritime attorney based in Miami, says that there’s a reason cruise lines pay up only when news helicopters are circling their ships as they pull into port. They constantly suggest that their passengers are to blame for the outbreaks. A review of the recent CDC reports shows that the CDC never conclusively determines how and where the virus comes onto the ship, which cruise lines interpret as an exoneration of their sanitary practices, he says. “The ship has enhanced cleaning for a few hours and then sets sail again,” Walker says. “The cruise line accuses the passengers of bringing the virus aboard. Repeat cycle.” You don’t have to get sick to see things his way. Stephen O’Brien, a bus supervisor from Dublin, was a passenger on the Explorer of the Seas, and although he didn’t become ill, he watched as the GII.4 Sydney strain turned the vessel into a “ghost ship.” On his level, one of every six staterooms had a yellow quarantine sticker, indicating an infection. He has no evidence for it, but he thinks that the cruise line didn’t sanitize the vessel thoroughly enough before the start of the cruise, and he holds Royal Caribbean responsible for the ensuing outbreak. “Could things have been handled better?” he asks. “Maybe.” That appears to be the consensus among passengers who have sailed on an infected cruise: Whatever a cruise line may have done to help passengers felled by stomach flu, they expected more. Fulp, for his part, has a long list of disappointments, from missed shore excursions to the $115 the ship charged for an “in cabin” visit by a doctor. His cousin rejected any compensation and will never set foot on another cruise. Fulp is having second thoughts about taking another cruise, too. He and his wife are trying to get a refund for another sailing scheduled for later this year. The argument about who’s responsible for norovirus or how much compensation passengers deserve may never be settled. But here’s one thing everyone can agree on: Spending most of your cruise doubled over in pain is no way to vacation. E-mail Christopher Elliott at _chris@elliott.org_. **More fromTravel:** Travel Guide Ski Guide Caribbean Guide

Disaster loan disaster: SBA much too slow to respond to Hurricane Sandy, probe finds

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the Small Business Administration took roughly twice as long as intended to approve disaster loan applications from home and business owners, according to the results of a federal probe. The Government Accountability Office found that the federal agency took 45 days on average to process disaster loan requests for damage to business goods and property, and 38 days to process financing requests to cover economic losses resulting from the storm. Both were well above the 21-day turnaround goal set by the SBA. Additionally, the agency has not yet revised its disaster plans to address the problems, “which may result in delays in loan funds for disaster victims” in the future, nor has it implemented a disaster loan program that was authorized by Congress six years ago to hasten the flow of disaster loans, the investigation concluded. “The agency was caught flat-footed,” Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Small Business Committee, said at a news conference late last week. The representative from New York asked the GAO to conduct the evaluation after it became clear last year that aid was moving slowly to victims in the Northeast. “Missteps, a lack of planning and an inability to right the ship quickly left businesses frustrated and unable to secure the financing they needed,” she said, adding that small-business owners “needed financial assistance in days, not months.” Ultimately, not quite half of the small-business owners (42 percent) who applied for assistance after Sandy received a loan, according to the GAO. That’s higher than after Hurricane Irene but a lower rate of approval than for victims of Katrina, Rita and Wilma. SBA officials say they were overwhelmed by an unexpectedly high volume of loan requests that came in during the first several weeks following the storm. They had anticipated that loan application volume would peak seven to nine weeks after Sandy struck. The agency simply wasn’t ready yet, they said. In addition, the agency, which handles the federal government’s disaster loan programs for both homeowners and business owners, said it faced a surge in applications from residents whose homes were damaged by Sandy, and that was partially responsible for the backlog of applications from small-business owners. Ann Marie Mehlum, the agency’s associate administrator for capital access, stated in a letter responding to the GAO that the SBA has taken and intends to continue taking steps to improve its disaster response programs and process applications more quickly. “SBA is firmly committed to providing affordable disaster loan assistance quickly and effectively,” she wrote.

Watchdogs question FAA error data

Two key government watchdogs raised doubts Wednesday about the accuracy of the Federal Aviation Administration’s record-keeping on potentially disastrous close calls between planes on the runway and in flight. One of them, Jeffrey B. Guizetti, assistant inspector general for aviation, told a House committee that he expected that an additional 300 to 600 incidents daily in which planes get too close would be revealed once new automatic tracking software is phased in. “The chances of a collision on the ground or in the air is low, but if it does occur, there will be a catastrophic loss of life,” Guizetti told the subcommittee on aviation. “So that is why there is a lot of concern about tracking these near misses.” The committee was also told that the biggest current danger to passengers may be on the ground rather than in the air, when mistakes are made at crowded airports or planes overshoot the runway. The issue of mistakes and misconduct by air-traffic controllers caught public attention last year after several near collisions, an incident involving first lady Michelle Obama’s plane and instances of controllers caught sleeping on the job. Critics have suggested that some controllers and their supervisors have kept mistakes off the books to avoid punishment. David Grizzle, who supervises the FAA’s more than 14,000 controllers, acknowledged that under past reporting practices “there was an incentive” for supervisors to “manage down the number of incidents that had been reported.” Managing millions of flights a year is a complex business, and so is the system that guides it. Sometimes when a plane get closer than the stipulated safe distance — generally three miles or 1,000 feet of altitude apart — it isn’t counted as an error. In some cases, for example, allowing two planes to get too close while on parallel courses in the same direction might not be deemed an error. There were 1,234 recorded operational errors in fiscal 2009, and although there were more than a million fewer flights in 2010, the number reported jumped to a record 1,887. “The reporting of incidents has increased, but we are not able to tell which part of the increase is the result of greater reporting and which part of the increase is the result of more incidents, in fact, occurring,” Grizzle said. The majority of those official errors did not put passengers at great risk. But there were enough serious incidents that year that the National Transportation Safety Board stepped in to investigate. Among the cases the NTSB reviewed were those in which a Boeing 737 nearly hit a helicopter while taking off from Houston; a Boeing 777 skimmed under a small plane on takeoff from San Francisco; a Boeing 737 nearly collided with a Cessna in Burbank, Calif.; an Airbus 319 passed 100 feet above the path of a Boeing 747 taking off in Anchorage; and an Embraer 135 taking off from Chicago took evasive action to avoid an in-bound twin-engine prop plane. It also reviewed an incident near Reagan National Airport in which an airliner carrying Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) swerved to avoid another jet after the encounter activated the on-board collision avoidance system. The FAA has moved to what it calls a non-punitive culture for reporting errors by air-traffic controllers for a strategic reason. Agency officials have argued that to implement a revolutionary $40 billion system known as NextGen, they need a complete picture of the mistakes controllers make. In the past, controllers faced punishment for their errors, and supervisors recognized it was in their best interest to keep a lid on the number of errors that were reported. Now, controllers are encouraged to report their own errors without fear of retribution. The new system has coincided with a spike in the number of reported incidents. When that trend began, the FAA attributed the increase in reported errors to the new reporting system. But the FAA backed off the contention and acknowledged that most self-reported mistakes were not included in the official count. “It is unclear if the recent increase in operational error reports is due to more actual reporting or an actual increase in errors,” Gerald L. Dillingham of the Government Accountability Office told the committee. “FAA also lacks data [in] some areas that are important for monitoring safety risk.” With the volume of air traffic growing faster than airports can expand, Dillingham said the FAA needs to speed up its control over planes that are rolling rather than flying. “There’s beginning to be a consensus that the most dangerous part of the trip is when the wheels are still on the ground,” Dillingham said. “According to FAA, there are three runway incursions that occur each day at towered airports in the United States. Runway excursions can be just as dangerous. FAA does not have a process in place to track and evaluate runway excursions.” An incursion is when an unauthorized aircraft, vehicle or person causes a safety issue on the runway. An excursion is when a plane veers off or overruns the runway surface.

Rerun: Protection of U.S. buildings hit again

It must be the summer rerun season. Tuesday’s congressional hearing, where yet another report critical of the Federal Protective Service was released, was so deja vu. The Government Accountability Office report is a new one about an old story — the low grades the FPS gets on overseeing its private guard force and assessing risks to federal facilities. This is the 10th report in the past five years. The GAO has made 32 recommendations and only five have been implemented, although the FPS is working on 20 others. The GAO’s latest report, to the House Homeland Security infrastructure protection subcommittee, reads a lot like the previous studies: “FPS does not have a comprehensive and reliable system to oversee its approximately 12,500 contract guards.” The FPS spent $35 million and four years — twice as long and $14 million more than planned — on a system to help the agency oversee its risk assessment program and guard force, which, by the way is 10 times larger than its federal employee staff. But the program was junked last month, “without yielding any demonstrable outcomes,” said Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.). An interim system has been deployed, but the GAO says that “FPS officials acknowledged that this method is not a comprehensive system for guard oversight. Consequently, it is now more difficult for FPS to verify that guards on post are trained and certified and that inspectors are conducting guard post inspections as required.” That’s not very comforting for the 1.4 million employees and visitors who daily use the 9,000 buildings that the FPS protects. “Clearly, we need a better process,” FPS Director L. Eric Patterson told the hearing. “Right now it’s a . . . pen-and-paper process for us.” Providing oversight and training of the contract guards is “a critical responsibility of FPS,” said subcommittee Chairman Dan Lungren (R-Calif.). Yet the agency essentially shifts that responsibility to guard companies and collects training and certification data from them. But “it appears that FPS does not independently verify that information,” the GAO said. In one of its many previous FPS reports, in this case from April 2010, the GAO said the reliance on self-reporting by guard companies may have contributed to the alleged falsification of documents by a contractor. Patterson was praised at the hearing for trying to improve training. He said he hired a senior-level person to oversee training full time and is working with the National Association of Security Companies to proliferate training for all the guards. “It’s a huge task,” he said, because the guards are in all 50 states and training requirements differ. Making sure he gets the training and certification of guards right isn’t Patterson’s only headache. The hearing also focused on his agency’s disappointing efforts at determining how much risk federal facilities face. The FPS is not assessing risks at federal buildings “in a manner consistent with standards,” said the GAO, adding that there is “a backlog of federal facilities that have not been assessed for several years.” But just how serious the backlog is can’t be determined because the agency’s data is so bad. “FPS does not have the ability today to look at the portfolio of government properties that it protects — some 9,000 GSA buildings — and to determine, at various levels, which of those facilities require the most resources,” Mark L. Goldstein, director of the GAO’s physical infrastructure issues, told the panel. “They protect everyone, everything essentially . . . at each level in the same way, regardless of where it is . . . and what its function is.” Multiple federal agencies, according to the report, “conduct their own risk assessments, in part because they have not been satisfied with FPS’s past assessments.” Patterson didn’t directly dispute the GAO findings, but he did put the best spin he could on a situation that doesn’t look good. The FPS collects lots of data, he said, on how vulnerable facilities are to threats from a number of areas, including natural disasters, criminal activities and terrorism. “I have also developed a very robust activity within FPS that looks at the threat picture every day,” he said. “[W]e have what we believe to be a fairly robust scenario, if you will, of bringing vulnerability, threat and consequences together — not necessarily in a single document, but in a process, in a plan.” In response, Goldstein was diplomatic, praising what progress the FPS has made, while making it clear that progress is not enough. He said the FPS cannot estimate the consequences of actions against government facilities, a major hole in its planning. Evaluating the consequence of a potential event is critical because it combines threat and vulnerability information. “[Y]ou can’t have a robust program without consequence information,” Goldstein said, “because what you’re doing is essentially telling people that you’ve set the dinner table without telling them what the food is going to be.” The FPS, Goldstein added, does not provide agencies “the kind of information they need to make robust decisions about which countermeasures they’re going to adopt and which they aren’t, which have more priority than others.” Certainly, just being in a federal building does not place employees and visitors in danger. But the GAO has repeatedly made it clear that any risk would be lower if the FPS could just get its act together. Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

Navy patrol ship fires warning shots amid series of confrontations with Iranian vessels

Iranian naval vessels veered close to American warships this week in a series of incidents that American officials described as harassing maneuvers risking dangerous escalation, defense officials said Thursday. The first incident occurred Tuesday, when Iranian ships made provocative maneuvers around a U.S. destroyer in the Strait of Hormuz, officials said. The following day, Iranian vessels came within several hundred meters of other American ships in the Persian Gulf, with one Iranian ship prompting the coastal patrol ship USS Squall to fire warning shots. “These were incidents that the crews deemed unsafe,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters. “These are incidents that carry a risk of escalation, and we don’t desire any kind of escalation. Our ships have been operating in that part of the world for years.” William Urban, a spokesman for the 5th Fleet, said four vessels from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) conducted a “high-speed intercept” in the first incident Tuesday, passing close to the USS Nitze, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, as it transited international waters. The Iranian ships that buzzed the Nitze ignored repeated radio, whistle and flare warnings from the Nitze and slowed their approach only when they were within 300 yards of the U.S. ship, Urban said. He described the Iranian actions as “unsafe and unprofessional.” The Nitze was accompanied by the USS Mason, a guided-missile destroyer, as it made what Urban described as a “routine transit” through an area that is an important international maritime thoroughfare.  “The Iranian high rate of closure on a United States ship operating in accordance with international law while transiting in international waters along with the disregard of multiple warning attempts created a dangerous, harassing situation that could have led to further escalation including additional defensive measures by Nitze,” Urban said in a statement. On Wednesday, three IRGC ships approached the Squall and the USS Tempest, another a coastal patrol ship, at high speed in the northern Persian Gulf, Urban said. Later in the day, an Iranian vessel came within 200 yards of the Tempest. After the Tempest shot flares and tried to communicate using the ship’s loudspeaker, Squall personnel fired three shots into the water from that ship’s .50-caliber gun. The Iranian ship then departed. That same Iranian ship later approached the USS Stout, a guided-missile destroyer, later Wednesday. “The [IRGC] vessel proceeded to cross the bow of the Stout at close range on three separate occasions,” Urban said.  Long-standing U.S. tensions with Iran over Tehran’s support for militant groups across the Middle East have not dissipated in the wake of a 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The countries are backing opposite sides in the conflict in Syria and remain at arm’s length in Iraq despite shared support for the government in Baghdad.

Early survey returns indicate federal employee morale continues to fall

Full results are not in yet, but early returns predict a bad showing for federal employee morale. The Office of Personnel Management plans to announce findings from the government-wide 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey soon. But results from two of the largest departments portend bad news. What the survey findings from the Departments of Defense (DOD) and Homeland Security (DHS) tell us about the state of the federal workforce — one year after the partial government shutdown — is not good. And although there have been some success stories, years of concerted attempts to improve employee engagement often have not worked. My colleague Josh Hicks reported that “civilian defense employees have grown increasingly dissatisfied with their jobs.” He found that approval ratings from Defense staffers in 2014 dropped in 47 out of 84 categories. In another article, Jerry Markon said the DHS survey shows that “debilitating morale problems,” long an issue there, continue. Only about 42 percent of the DHS employees said they were satisfied with the department, down from 44 percent last year. Together, DOD and DHS had almost one million staffers (750,000 at DOD alone), about 45 percent of the government’s executive branch employment, in 2012, according to OPM figures. With such a significant portion of the workforce, the low morale showing in those agencies doesn’t bode well for the rest of the government. John Palguta, a vice president of the Partnership for Public Service, said the results reflect the “mental abuse” federal employees suffered from the 16-day shutdown that forced many employees to stay home last October. About 85 percent of DOD staffers were prevented from working, according to the Pentagon. After buying into the notion that federal workers are crucial to the nation’s well-being, the shutdown essentially told them you’re “really not that important,” Palguta said. That had a “profound and lingering impact on the workforce.” Palguta, a former 34-year federal employee, studies the survey as the basis of the Partnership’s annual “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” report. Agency officials take the results of the federal survey and the “Best Places” report seriously, even if their efforts to improve employee morale don’t always work. Nathan J. Christensen, a Pentagon spokesman, said DOD is committed to developing an “action plan” to address the “decline from 2013 in the areas of trust, job satisfaction, and organizational satisfaction.” Marsha Catron, a DHS spokeswoman, said Secretary Jeh Johnson and Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are “committed to making professional fulfillment one of their highest priorities. They have focused on continuing to improve employee engagement through enhanced communication and training, employee recognition, and strengthening the skills of employees at every level. A great deal of work is ongoing and there is much more to be done.” We’ve heard these good words before. Yet employee morale continues to fall. The Pentagon should “invest in the civilian workforce — both with time and resources,” to improve morale, said Patricia J. Niehaus, a DOD employee and president of the Federal Managers Association, whose membership includes many Defense staffers. “Quit telling overworked employees and managers to do more with less. We’re way past the point of being able to do that.” J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents some DHS workers, said officials “need to bargain better contracts. Stop stalling and blocking every effort to improve working conditions and every effort to have any kind of financial recognition or reward for great work. Bargain good contracts with some real meat. Then morale will improve. Otherwise, it will continue to drop like lead.” The 2013 “Best Places” overall index score of 57.8, an indication of federal employee job satisfaction and commitment level, was the lowest in the report’s 10-year history. This year might be worse. “We’re going in the wrong direction,” Palguta said. Improving employee engagement has been a priority of the President’s Management Agenda and the objective of countless agency efforts. “Despite all that we’ve gone below where we started over 10 years ago,” he said. “That means,” Palguta added, “there’s something going on that’s not healthy.” **Twitter:@JoeDavidsonWP ** Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

Better economy contributes to increase in traffic deaths in 2015, officials say

A more rosy economy has cast gloom over U.S. roadways, with thousands more people dying in car crashes in the past 18 months. Data released Monday shows that 2,348 more people died in crashes last year than in 2014, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s annual recap of traffic fatalities. That 7.2 percent increase translates to a total of 35,092 people killed on U.S. roads. In addition, the numbers of pedestrian and bicyclist deaths were greater than at any other time in the past two decades, and motorcycle fatalities reached the highest number since 2012. “Despite decades of safety improvements, far too many people are killed on our nation’s roads every year,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. The bad news was compounded last week when the independent National Safety Council said preliminary statistics showed that the number of traffic deaths was 9 percent higher in the first six months of this year than during the corresponding period in 2015. “The improving economy is one likely cause of the increase in traffic deaths,” said Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “Historically, traffic deaths decline during recessions as the unemployment rate rises, and then increase again as the economy picks up and unemployment declines.” Four avoidable factors were blamed for the majority of the fatal crashes. NHTSA said alcohol-related fatalities increased by 3.2 percent, from 9,943 in 2014 to 10,265 in 2015; the number of fatal crashes in which distracted driving played a part increased by 8.8 percent, from 3,197 to 3,477; crashes linked to speeding increased by 3 percent, from 9,283 to 9,557; and the number of victims not wearing a seatbelt increased by 4.9 percent, from 9,410 to 9,874. “The data tell us that people die when they drive drunk, distracted or drowsy, or if they are speeding or unbuckled,” said NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind. “While there have been enormous improvements in many of these areas, we need to find new solutions to end traffic fatalities.” Rader added: “If we were to double down on tackling drinking and driving, reducing speeding, and getting more people buckled up, it would make a big difference. The increase we’re seeing now wouldn’t be as large.” The deaths of 5,376 pedestrians marked a 9.5 percent increase over 2014. The 818 cyclists killed represented a 12.2 percent increase. Motorcycle fatalities were up by 8.3 percent to 4,976, the highest number since 2012. Traffic deaths declined by almost 10 percent as unemployment peaked in 2007-2008. By 2014, the number of fatalities had dropped to 32,744, the lowest ever. “The miles-traveled that come back after a recession are riskier miles,” Rader said. “Optional, more hazardous travel returns, like going out at night and on the weekends, or taking long trips on unfamiliar roads.” Since 1990, more than 1 million people have died in crashes on U.S. roads, and the World Health Organization says there are about 1.25 million global traffic deaths each year. Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, an organization of state highway-safety officials, called the 2015 federal data “an urgent wake-up call that highway safety needs to be a national priority.” The National Safety Council last week estimated that 19,100 people died in crashes during the first six months of this year, an 18 percent increase since 2014. An additional 2.2 million people suffered serious injuries. “Our complacency is killing us,” said Deborah A.P. Hersman, president of the safety council and a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. “One hundred deaths every day should outrage us.” The council said traffic fatalities have skyrocketed in seven states since 2014. They increased by 43 percent in Florida, 34 percent in Georgia, 33 percent in Indiana, 31 percent in California, 26 percent in North Carolina, 24 percent in Illinois and 24 percent in Kentucky. The organization estimates that 438 people will die this Labor Day weekend, the highest number the group has ever projected for the weekend that marks the traditional end of summer. “Americans should demand change to prioritize safety actions and protect ourselves from one of the leading causes of preventable death,” Hersman said.

What defense contractors should know about the Pentagon’s new program

The Pentagon has rolled out its latest program targeted at defense contractors: Better Buying Power 3.0. This is the third iteration of the government’s effort to streamline how it purchases defense programs, following the release of version 1.0 in 2010 and version 2.0 in 2012. The policies outlined in Better Buying 3.0 are expected to guide the Defense Department’s acquisition efforts going forward. The department’s top acquisition official, Frank Kendall, says this round is different from its predecessors because it places emphasis on technological advancement to keep pace with rivals such as Russia and China. So if you do business with the government, what can you actually expect from the program? Here are four major takeaways: **Incentive-based approach.** The basic idea of version 3.0 is to give companies business reasons to innovate and invest more in research and development, Kendall said, because the Pentagon’s own budget constraints make it less able to do so. In Kendall’s words, the Pentagon wants a “lean, capable but creative industry.” That means the Pentagon wants contractors to use more prototyping and experimentation while they develop products or services. In return, the government will reward companies that bring a fresh approach to their programs. One way the Pentagon aims to reward companies is by increasing the use of incentive-based contracts, a new item featured in version 3.0. The department will use these specific kinds of contracts on a more regular basis, Kendall said. The Pentagon will also expand its Superior Supplier Incentive Program across the Defense Department. The Navy, which was the first branch of the military to try the program this year, created a list of its top suppliers to highlight those who performed well and motivate those who weren’t on the list to improve. Contractors were ranked on their cost, scheduling and quality performance over the past three years. **More emphasis on research and development.** The new program stresses research and development above all. The department will make smarter, more targeted investments in areas of technology that matter most and increase its long-term R&D planning, according to Kendall. Steve Welby, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant defense secretary for systems engineering, will lead a team to oversee that effort, he said. To spur industry research, Kendall said the Pentagon plans to give companies earlier drafts of technical requirements. By doing so, it hopes to collect feedback from companies and involve them more closely during the shaping of program requirements. For small-business owners, the government plans to increase the returns on its small business innovation research program under version 3.0. However, the Pentagon is going to take a closer look at increasing the productivity of internal research and development (IR&D), which is the research that it reimburses contractors for doing. Kendall said IR&D cost the government at least $4 billion annually, so it wants to “make sure that’s being done as effectively as possible.” That means contractors can expect more scrutiny of their research projects. ******Thinking commercially.** A shortage of defense dollars has already pushed many contractors into exploring the commercial market. The Pentagon wants to make the most of existing technology by purchasing off-the-shelf products that would result in cost savings, such as the Army has done with tactical radios. The other side of a more commercial approach is to act like a commercial buyer, Kendall said. He cited the space launch sector as an example, which has seen the entrance of new players offering the department more affordable options. “The idea of [Better Buying Power 3.0] is to look for more opportunities like that,” he said. The Pentagon will remove some of the barriers to commercial purchases under the new program. Kendall said the department plans to step up its use of a regulation that allows the acquisition of commercial technology with a lesser degree of cost scrutiny than normal purchases. **Don’t forget competition.** The basic tenets of Better Buying Power 3.0 are not all that different from the first two versions. That means competition is still the name of the game in the acquisition process. In fact, Kendall said he is unhappy with the level of competition across defense programs and wants to see it increase. Related: Pentagon effort seeks to retain U.S.’s technological edge **More from Capital Business:** For a daily rundown of Washington area business news, sign up for the “CapBiz A.M.” e-mail newsletter.

Ed Ramotowski: Smoothing the visa process while maintaining U.S. security

Between 2010 and 2014, the number of tourist and student travel visas issued by the State Department increased by more than 50 percent, from 6.4 million to 9.9 million. During this same period, wait times for in-person interviews with embassy consular officers dropped from an average of 15 days worldwide to about six days. This impressive growth and increased efficiency resulted from a State Department initiative led by Ed Ramotowski, deputy assistant secretary for visa services, and his team at the Bureau of Consular Affairs. The work was prompted by a January 2012 executive order from President Obama calling on the department to streamline the visa process for foreign visitors, reduce lengthy wait times and boost the number of international travelers to the U.S., to spur economic growth and job creation. “The work that Ed has done to improve the processing has had a tremendous impact,” said Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association. “Ed is really the one who made things happen.” It’s estimated that the increase in foreign travel has helped generate more than 54,000 jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity. In managing the initiative, Ramotowski provided guidance and instructions to embassy officials across the world and added staff at high-volume consular posts, including retired Foreign Service officers who spoke the local languages. He also privatized functions such as photography, fingerprinting and fee collection, and he expanded the use of departmental authority to waive personal interviews for repeat travelers who don’t pose security risks. Ramotowski helped “make it easier for people to obtain their credentials to come to the United States while remaining vigilant” about security precautions, said Tom Nides, a former deputy secretary of state. This involved using a screening system that identifies those who might pose problems, while processing legitimate, low-risk travelers more quickly. Consular officers Donald Jacobson and Charles Bennett led teams in Brazil and China, respectively. Faster processing helped boost travel from China from about 1 million travelers in 2011 to 2.1 million travelers in 2014, and the number of travelers from Brazil from 1.4 million to 2.2 million during that same time. In Sao Paulo, the busiest visa post in Brazil, the average interview wait time dropped from about 90 days in 2010 to about three days in 2015. In Shanghai, China, also extremely busy, average wait times decreased from 120 days in 2010 to about three days in 2015. Applicants who qualify usually receive a visa a few days after the interview. A challenge in the Brazilian cities of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and Recife was severe space constraints and inadequate and outdated consular offices. It was difficult to accommodate everyone seeking visas. With Ramotowski’s support, Jacobson led his team in privatizing non-governmental functions, freeing staff and space to do personal interviews in the consular offices. In China, the obstacle was the government’s initial reluctance to reciprocate on increasing the validity of visas beyond a year. In 2014, annual renewal applications had reached 30 percent of the visa workload, clogging the system and limiting the availability of visa appointments for an expanding Chinese middle class. Bennett and Ramotowski were heavily involved in the department’s behind-the-scenes negotiations to convince the Chinese to extend visa validity to 10 years for tourists and business travel, and five years for students attending U.S. colleges. The decision on those extensions, announced by President Obama and China’s Xi Jinping in November 2014, spurred visa demand and is now smoothing travel for millions of Chinese tourists—among the biggest spenders in the U.S. American travelers to China also now receive 10-year visas. This work in Brazil and China has been replicated in missions around the world. “Most people in government would roll their eyes and say, ‘No, we can’t do that.’ But Ed was able to convert all the people who were critics into strong allies,” said Isabel Hill of the International Trade Commission. The State Department drew on the experience of private-sector companies, Ramotowski said. “Disney talked to some of the larger missions about their expertise in managing lines and moving through the process efficiently and creating a positive experience,” said Ramotowski. “We tried to benefit from those practices.” Ramotowski joined the State Department 29 years ago and has served as chief of the consular section at U.S. embassies in the Bahamas and Poland, and in other positions in Mexico, Colombia and Jamaica. He assumed his current job in July 2012. The visa initiative improved the process for foreigners to come to the U.S., helping “create jobs in travel and tourism and build a greater understanding of the U.S. around the world,” Ramotowski said. “We don’t want to rest on our laurels,” he added. “We keep trying to improve the process, take advantage of advances in technology and continue to make progress.” _This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to the Fed Page of The Washington Post to read about other federal workers who are making a difference. To recommend a Federal Player of the Week, contact us at fedplayers@ourpublicservice.org._

Military hazing is often horrifying — and the Pentagon has no idea how often it happens

Lew’s suicide jump-started a debate: What constitutes hazing in the military, and what should the Pentagon do to crack down on the practice? Lew’s case generated significant interest in Washington in part because of his aunt: Rep. Judy Chu (D.-Calif.). She pressed successfully for an independent investigation by the Government Accountability Office, saying that the stories of her nephew and other victims of hazing — generally described as abusive behavior meant to correct a mistake or earn one’s way into a group — showed the military clearly needed to make improvements.   The GAO carried out the investigation from April 2015 through this month, and found that the Defense Department and Coast Guard have “limited visibility” over hazing incidents. For example, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps track data on hazing cases, but the data is “not complete and consistent due to varying tracking method that do not always include all reported incidents,” the report said. “For example, until October 2015, the Army only tracked cases investigated by criminal investigators or military police, while the Navy required reports on substantiated hazing cases and the Marine Corps required reports on both substantiated and unsubstantiated cases,” it continued. “The Air Force and Coast Guard do not require the collection of hazing incident data, and instead have taken an ad hoc approach to compiling relevant information to respond to requests for such data.” The GAO also held focus groups with Marines and sailors at Camp Pendleton and Naval Base Coronado in California, and found a mixture of attitudes and frustrations. Notably, mid-ranking enlisted troops known as noncommissioned officers “reinforced the suggestion that hazing definitions are not sufficiently clear” to determine what is hazing and what is not, the report said.  When surveyed, however, more than a third of male Marines (14 of 39) and and nearly half of female Marines (eight of 17) said they had experienced hazing during their military career. About a quarter of male sailors (10 of 40) and female sailors (four of 15) reported the same, the GAO reported. Clarence A. Johnson, the director of the Pentagon’s Office of Diversity Management, said in a response to the GAO’s preliminary findings including in the final report that the Defense Department’s new policy on hazing and bullying will help the service track cases in the services. It was signed Dec. 23, less than a week after GAO released the draft report to the Pentagon. The GAO recommended that the services “provide additional clarification” to service members about what constitutes hazing, and Johnson concurred. The services have been directed to revise training or communicate in some other way “further guidance on hazing policies.” Lew’s case ultimately resulted in the sergeant and a lance corporal being found not guilty of any crime in courts-martial. A second lance corporal was found guilty of assault, and sentenced to 30 days of confinement and reduction in rank to private first class.

Coming soon to the State Department: Citizen Liaison Volunteers and online passport renewal

Listen to stories from the State Department and you might turn your travel plans inward, to domestic destinations. Last year, the agency helped the family members of 10,000 civilians who died overseas. In South Asia, it rescued three citizens from forced marriages and sheltered a mother and her children in danger in Africa. It assisted tourists wounded in the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels and safeguarded Americans in Syria, Mali and Burkina Faso. Despite the risks, more and more Americans are looking outward, across oceans and borders. Nearly 130 million citizens — or 2 in 5 — hold a passport. The department will issue 17 million books this year, and it expects the number of applications to rise to 21 million in 2017. “Applications are at record levels,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said during a recent meeting at the Washington Passport Agency. “And wait times are low.” The lag between submit and receive used to be three months; it is now about six weeks. To assist and protect Americans abroad, Kerry announced a new program called MissionOne. The initiative will expand and modernize its services to Americans. For example, it will bolster the American Liaison Network, a web of expat civilians who work in concert with embassies and consulates to aid U.S. travelers. The wardens will assume greater responsibilities in their role as intermediaries; they also earn a new name tag, Citizen Liaison Volunteers. “CLVs will work with U.S. embassies and consulates to identify the needs of the U.S. citizen community so that we may more effectively work to address security, safety, and health issues that affect U.S. citizens,” the department stated in a news release. MissionOne will also provide a more inclusive compendium of information under the Local Resources Initiative. Embassies around the globe will compile lists of contacts for such essential needs as medical care, crisis counseling, police and shelters. The U.S. Embassy in London is a prime example. It posts links on topics including marriage and civil partnerships, money transfers and relocation services. In 2017, the department will focus on creating an online passport renewal system, which will expedite the process. To protect passports from fraud and tampering, it will implement a redesign with a polycarbonate data page, laser engravings, micro-text and special inks. Before departing, Kerry looked at his staff and said, “21 million.” Then he grinned and pointed a finger at the crowd as if saying, “We got this.” **More fromTravel:** Have an opinion about a recent flight? Tell TripAdvisor all about it. An app that speeds up the customs process expands to Washington Dulles This isn’t Darwin’s Galapagos: The wildlife-rich islands are more tourist- friendly than you think

Iranian drone approaches Navy aircraft carrier in second dangerous encounter in a week

An Iranian drone made several passes by the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, the second such incident in a week and described by the Navy as unsafe, unprofessional and dangerous. The unmanned aerial vehicle made the passes by the Nimitz while the aircraft carrier was in international waters and carrying out operations with jets on its flight deck, said Navy Lt. Ian M. McConnaughey, a service spokesman in the Middle East. The drone, an Iranian QOM-1, moved in despite the Navy making repeated radio calls to establish communications, and it came within 1,000 feet of U.S. aircraft, he said. “The failure of the Iranian UAV to utilize standard, internationally-mandated navigation lights during a nighttime approach of a U.S. aircraft carrier engaged in flight operations created a dangerous situation with the potential for collision, and is not in keeping with international maritime customs and laws,” McConnaughey said in a statement.   McConnaughey said Monday that there have been 14 incidents between U.S. and Iranian naval forces this year in which the U.S. military labeled something the Iranians did as unsafe and unprofessional. But the QOM-1 drones have only become a problem recently, officials said. “While the use of UAVs has become more prevalent in the region, these two occurrences are the only UAV-related unsafe and unprofessional interactions that we are tracking,” McConnaughey said. Previously, a Navy patrol boat, the USS Thunderbolt, opened fired in July with two machine-gun bursts near an Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessel as it made a quick approach in the Persian Gulf, Pentagon officials said. The Iranian craft got within 150 yards of the Thunderbolt. “The reality is that even one unsafe or unprofessional interaction would be a cause for concern,” McConnaughey said. “This type of behavior is not in accordance with international maritime customs, norms and laws. Each instance creates an unnecessary risk of escalation.”

‘Dirty bomb’ threat at hospitals remains, GAO report says

Nearly four out of five high-risk hospitals nationwide have failed to implement safeguards to secure radiological material that could be used in a “dirty bomb,” according to a draft report by congressional investigators. Eleven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks focused attention on the possibility that terrorists could use crude nuclear devices, the analysis by the Government Accountability Office described numerous instances of failure to secure highly radioactive material at hospitals. “Medical facilities currently are not required to take any specific actions to make sure these materials are safe, and many have very sloppy practices, which is remarkable nearly 11 years after 9/11,” the report says, according to a copy of the draft scheduled for release Tuesday and provided to The Washington Post. The GAO evaluated efforts by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Nuclear Security Administration to regulate and secure the materials. The report said the NNSA had completed security upgrades at only 321 of 1,503 medical facilities it identified as high-risk because they store extensive amounts of radiological material. The NNSA said it would not be able to complete upgrades until 2025, leaving important facilities vulnerable. “Unsecured radiological materials at hospitals across the country could be used by terrorists to build a dirty bomb that would have devastating social and economic consequences,” said Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on oversight of government management. “We must strengthen domestic radiological security requirements and accelerate efforts to secure all medical facilities with radiological materials,” Akaka said. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, blamed delays on security requirements that are voluntary and too broad. The report also spelled out numerous examples of poor security. In one instance, an unidentified big-city hospital kept cesium-137, a highly poisonous radioactive chemical, in a padlocked room, with the combination to the lock written on the door frame in a busy hallway. At another hospital, the number of people with access to radioactive material could not be monitored because the computer program that tracked comings and goings didn’t count beyond 500. Fourteen medical facilities refused to participate in the voluntary safeguards, the report said. Four of the unidentified facilities are in big cities. “The longer it takes to implement the security upgrades, the greater the risk that potentially dangerous radiological sources remain unsecured and could be used as terrorist weapons,” the GAO said. David McIntyre, a spokesman at the NRC, said in an e-mail that the agency and state regulators have imposed tougher security requirements on facilities with licenses for radiological material since the 2001 attacks. He also said the NRC and the NNSA cooperate in the voluntary security program. The GAO findings underscore the larger problem of storage and tracking of nuclear materials around the world. Better nuclear safeguards were among the recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. “We always regarded it as one of the most important,” former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean, who chaired the commission and keeps track of compliance with its 41 recommendations, said in an interview. “A nuclear terrorist attack is not the most likely, but it could be the most catastrophic.” President Obama has called nuclear security a top national security priority, and he and other world leaders pledged cooperation against the risk of proliferation from outlaw nations such as North Korea during a nuclear security summit in March. Radioactive material is used in diagnosing and treating cancer and other diseases. In hospital settings, it is usually encased in metal. There has been no known terrorist theft of nuclear materials from medical facilities. Still, the terrorism risk has focused on the use of radioactive material to build rough bombs that could cause widespread economic damage and panic if detonated in a subway or high-rise building as well as more sophisticated “suitcase” bombs that could be more powerful. Al-Qaeda has long sought weapons of mass destruction, though its actions have focused on more conventional bombs. More than a decade after it launched the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, al-Qaeda is described by counterterrorism experts as a significantly weakened organization. The disruption of an underwear bomb plot developed in Yemen this year underscored the organization’s vulnerability as much as its dedication to continuing to develop plots against U.S. targets. But officials and experts have voiced growing concern about al-Qaeda’s ability to exploit instability in the Middle East to forestall its demise at the same time that the turmoil has complicated counterterrorism relationships for the United States. Insurgencies in Syria and elsewhere have made al-Qaeda “operationally active in an environment in which their growth and activity is not being checked,” said Juan Zarate, who was a counterterrorism adviser in the George W. Bush administration. Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is the most potent threat to the United States, officials said, because it remains committed to trying to hit U.S. targets in creative ways. “The threat is still high out of Yemen, and it’s a really dynamic time in places like Egypt, Syria and across North Africa,” a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

An aggressive approach to whistleblower allegations

The May 15 editorial “Overseeing the dangerous skies,” about Transportation Department whistleblower complaints, diminished the importance of significant changes that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has made in how it investigates and responds to these types of allegations. Two years ago, the FAA established an independent office to ensure that whistleblower complaints are thoroughly reviewed and properly handled. The FAA did not — and does not — hesitate to make management changes, institute new procedures and establish strict corrective plans to address safety issues. The FAA replaced an entire management team at a New York air facility last year when it substantiated a whistleblower complaint. We are confident that this nation’s flying public is safe. This is because the Transportation Department and the FAA have made changes in response to whistleblower disclosures, and because the collaborative relationship between labor and management encourages employees to talk openly about safety concerns. While we will not dwell on the past, together we will continue to make more improvements so that our aviation system remains the safest in the world. ****Michael Huerta and Paul Rinaldi,** Washington** The writers are, respectively, the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration and president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

Cracking down on shady curbside buses

THE PROLIFERATION of affordable, convenient, curbside bus service along the Interstate 95 corridor, including the motorcoaches that run between the District and New York, has been a blessing for budget-conscious passengers. It has also been a cause for concern. In an industry that is generally underregulated — compared with domestic aviation, for example, which carries about the same number of passengers annually as buses do — there has been an opening for shady operators. A report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) last fall found that, on average, curbside bus operators had higher rates of accidents, injuries and fatalities than conventional operators (such as Greyhound) or charter bus firms. While many curbside bus companies offered safe, responsible and reliable service, others drove up the average with relatively frequent violations of federal rules on unsafe driving, driver fitness and vehicle maintenance. In recognition of that, regulators conducted a year-long investigation that culminated last week with what the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) called the broadest crackdown on safety infractions in its history. The agency shuttered three main companies that oversaw a web of related curbside bus operators. The investigation found an array of bad practices that suggested indifference to safety. Alarmingly, many of the curbside operators targeted in the federal probe had previously been ordered shut but had continued to operate, in many cases simply by changing names or bases of operation. In its report last year, the NTSB described ripe conditions for bad actors to thrive in the absence of muscular regulatory oversight. In a burgeoning industry, the number of inspections and compliance reviews needed to assess an operator’s safety performance had overwhelmed the modest resources of regulators. Moreover, it was easy for bus operators to launch new businesses and to escape requirements that they submit basic data, such as mileage information, to federal regulators. Over the past five years, the government has doubled the number of bus inspections. It has also banned texting or any other use of mobile phones by commercial drivers. That’s a good start; so is a mobile app called SaferBus that enables passengers to review a bus company’s safety record before buying a ticket. Other measures are hung up in a broad transportation bill before Congress. Those include requiring new bus operators to submit to a full safety audit before they can start carrying passengers; increasing the fines (now just $2,200 a day) for carriers that operate without proper authority; and expanding regulators’ power to go after bus operators that are ordered closed, only to re-create themselves under a different name. It’s important that passengers who have come to rely on curbside operators for their prices and ease of service continue to have confidence that they are in safe hands when they board the bus. The federal investigation is a strong step in that direction — but it’s just a first step. ****

An Iranian ship refused to heed the Navy’s warning. Then shots were fired.

A U.S. Navy patrol boat fired two bursts of machine-gun fire at an Iranian military ship Tuesday as it made an alarmingly fast and close approach in the Persian Gulf, marking the latest aggressive encounter between the two adversaries. The unidentified Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessel got within 150 yards of the USS Thunderbolt and risked a collision, U.S. officials said, before the American patrol boat fired warning shots and quickly ended the encounter. One Pentagon official who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity described it as an isolated incident and confirmed that no one was hurt. U.S. officials have not specified where the incident occurred, saying only that U.S. and coalition ships were participating in a daytime training exercise when the Iranians conducted an “unsafe and unprofessional interaction” by failing to observe internationally recognized maritime customs. It’s also unclear how many Americans were aboard the Thunderbolt. Based in Norfolk, it can carry a crew of 27 and is used primarily for patrolling coastlines and to provide surveillance for interdiction operations.  At least three other American vessels were nearby at the time. Video released by the U.S. Central Command shows the Iranian vessel approaching the Thunderbolt’s starboard side, extremely close to the ship’s bow. An American sailor can be heard radioing the ships’ coordinates, and then the sound of machine-gun fire. “The Iranian vessel did not respond to repeated attempts to establish radio communications as it approached,” said Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Defense Department spokesman. “Thunderbolt then fired warning flares and sounded the internationally recognized danger signal of five short blasts on the ship’s whistle, but the Iranian vessel continued inbound. As the Iranian vessel proceeded toward the U.S. ship, Thunderbolt again sounded five short blasts before firing warning shots in front of the Iranian vessel.” Iranian military officials characterized the incident as a U.S. provocation and took credit for having “neutralized” the threat. In a report published last winter, the Office of Naval Intelligence indicated that vessels operated by the Revolutionary Guard Corps routinely monitor U.S. and allied warships in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, a busy waterway that links to the Gulf of Oman. The majority of these encounters are “safe and routine,” it said, but “unprofessional or aggressive” run-ins are becoming more frequent. “Such operations increase the likelihood for a mishap at sea, potentially leading to strategic tension and insecurity in the region,” the report said. The Pentagon documented 35 such interactions with Iranians last year, up from to 23 in 2015. This year, it has acknowledged at least five. Last month, Iranian forces harassed a formation of three American ships — the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the guided-missile destroyer Cole and the dry cargo ship Washington Chambers — shining floodlights on them from a distance of 800 yards and pointing a laser at an airborne U.S. helicopter. Twice in March, the USNS Invincible, which is outfitted with sonar and radar equipment, had close encounters. In one incident, an Iranian frigate moved within 150 yards. In the other, Revolutionary Guard fast boats cut in front of the U.S. ship, forcing it to rapidly change course to avoid a collision. Such adversarial behavior between the two nations’ navies comes amid what has become a more complicated dynamic on the ground inside Iraq and Syria.   Thomas noted, too, that during one recent trip into northern Iraq, where Iranian-trained militias are battling the Islamic State, his plane was parked beside one belonging to Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s special operations Quds Force, which the United States has designated a supporter of terrorism. “We bump into them everywhere,” he said.

CDC chief admits pattern of safety lapses after mishandling anthrax, other pathogens

The head of the federal government’s public health laboratories in Atlanta told Congress Wednesday that researchers mishandled live anthrax and other deadly pathogens in the past because agency officials failed to see a broad pattern of safety lapses. In the past, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focused too narrowly on responding to specific incidents at individual laboratories without addressing more systemic issues. “We missed a critical pattern,” said CDC Director Thomas Frieden. “And the pattern is an insufficient culture of safety.” Frieden testified before an oversight subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that focused on laboratory safety after more than 80 CDC employees may have been exposed to live anthrax last month, when samples were transferred from one lab to other CDC labs. As a result of the CDC’s internal investigation, the agency disclosed last week that there had been four other incidents in the past decade when deadly pathogens were mishandled. None had been previously disclosed by the CDC. Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said government watchdogs have documented numerous and systemic safety lapses over the years. He called the most recent incident at the agency “sloppy” and “inexcusable.” He said the agency’s labs are supposed to be “the gold standard” for the world. Noting that Frieden had made similar promises to improve safety, training and accountability when other incidents have taken place, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said, “Why should we believe you this time that things are going to be different?” Although Frieden said no one had been hurt and all pathogens were killed in the incidents, he said that was no excuse. He said the agency was taking several measures, including stronger internal and external oversight and accountability. Workers must be encouraged to report incidents, all staff need to take responsibility for safety, and CDC needs to “apply the same rigor” to safety as it does to disease prevention and research, he said. He pledged to oversee “sweeping measures” to improve the culture of safety and noted that if the agency uncovers more problems in the near future, it may be the result of better reporting and not an indication of deeper problems. At several points during the hearing, Murphy held up a Ziploc bag containing petri dishes with photos of anthrax bacteria glued to them and asked why scientists would be using the plastic bags to transport dangerous pathogens. Murphy was referring to an investigation by the Agriculture Department’s animal and plant health inspection service into the anthrax incident. The probe found that samples of the bacteria were stored in unlocked refrigerators in unrestricted hallways and that dangerous materials were transferred using Ziploc bags, among a host of other safety lapses. Frieden said researchers who were working with those samples believed them to have been inactivated. But scientists at the CDC bioterror lab had not killed the anthrax bacteria before transferring samples to other labs, so the “core error” was the initial failure to kill the bacteria, he said. Much of the testimony centered on the laboratories inside and outside the federal government that conduct research on microbes that could be used as bioterror agents. Nancy Kingsbury, a managing director of the Government Accountability Office, told the committee that since the 2001 anthrax attacks in Washington and New York, her agency has noted the rapid increase in the number of biosafety labs. There are nearly 1,500 registered laboratories in the United States that conduct this kind of research, according to the GAO. But there is no single agency setting national standards or providing oversight, she said. She said no one has been able to address some fundamental questions: “How many do we really need? For what purpose? Against what threat?” Richard Ebright, a chemical biology professor from Rutgers University who conducts biosafety research, said multiple safety lapses at CDC labs over the years have been documented by government watchdogs, including the inspector general’s office at the Department of Health and Human Services and the GAO. Last month’s event was “not an isolated event,” he said. It was a pattern that could have and should have been recognized a half decade ago.” Moreover, he said, neither the CDC nor the USDA should be involved in overseeing the labs because both organizations fund this kind of research, posing a clear conflict of interest that may be partly responsible for continuing safety problems. More from The Washington Post: Second probe finds more safety lapses at CDC CDC says it repeatedly mishandled dangerous microbes NIH fails to notify employees about smallpox discovery 75 scientists may have been exposed to anthrax, CDC says

Homeland Security finally shows employee morale improvement, though still rates low

Finally, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has some good news about employee morale. It’s still a cellar dweller, but not quite as mired in the muck of low employee survey scores as it had been.  One and three percentage points might not sound like much, but those increases are considered significant in a survey in which every data point counts. And the data reflect more than inside federal agency baseball.  Employee morale drives performance for the individual and the agency. “Individual agency performance contributes to success for the entire federal government,” Cobert added, “which means better service for the American people.” This year’s survey was conducted from April through June. Almost 408,000 employees in 80 agencies responded, a staff participation rate of nearly 46 percent.  But it does show how eager they are to trumpet morale improvement in a department where doom seemed to be its destiny. “These results reflect that employee engagement at DHS, after six straight years of decline, went up three whole percentage points this year — from 53 percent in 2015 to 56 percent this year,” Johnson said. “This is no anomaly.” That’s a statement of hope, not fact. One year doesn’t make a pattern. The Broadcasting Board of Governors, another regular bottom-feeder that oversees the Voice of America and other government broadcasters, also scored 56. But unlike DHS, BBG is going backward. It scored two points better last year. Johnson credited his department’s improved results to several factors, including his and Mayorkas’s personal involvement with staffers. They talked with employees during 45 sessions in 22 cities. “In March I put on a TSA [Transportation Security Administration] uniform and worked alongside TSA personnel at BWI airport,” Johnson said. “From all these engagements, we heard employees’ top three concerns were pay, work/life balance and hiring.  We pushed out tool kits to managers and supervisors for conducting their own town hall meetings.” “I kept hearing from [the Office of Personnel Management] that it will take more than a year to turn this big ship around,” Johnson told my colleague Lisa Rein. “One of the reasons I’m so pleased with the results this year is because I was so disappointed with the results last year.” Johnson’s dedication to improving employee morale has been noticed on Capitol Hill. “Should this trend continue, it will be even clearer that Secretary Johnson made morale improvement a top priority…” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (Miss.), the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. “Employee morale and engagement is critical for an agency the size of DHS to function effectively – our national security depends on it.” NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden was on the call with Cobert and Johnson. The space agency boss is in a position to crow, although he didn’t, because NASA consistently rates at or near the top of FEVS results, and in the Partnership for Public Service’s annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government report, which uses the FEVS data. NASA’s 2016 employee index score is 80, two points above last year. The Federal Trade Commission scored 82 this year, the highest in the large agency category and up four points from 2015.  The little-known Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission beat all with a score of 90, a 13-point jump from 2015. A one-year leap of that magnitude should call for steroid testing. After the call, Bolden said his agency rates high because “we are focused on improving employee engagement and ensuring senior and especially mid-level managers focus on leadership and being good role models and mentors.” He emphasized the importance of involving mid-level managers, those who deal more directly with staff. Bosses in other agencies should pay attention. It’s a strategy that works.

Traffic deaths increase in U.S.

Traffic fatalities on the nation’s roads have spiked dramatically this year, ending six years of steady decline that had seemed to herald success after decades of effort to make vehicles and roadways less risky. The 7.1 percent increase in the first nine months of the year was the biggest jump during the January-through-September span since 1975, the year that federal officials began compiling traffic-death data. In releasing the preliminary statistics, federal officials pointed out that the year-to-year comparison was made against 2011, when highway deaths reached their lowest point in more than 60 years. Even with the increase this year, they said the total was 26 percent below the number killed during the first nine months of 2005. The projections were made by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration based on data collected from state officials. They showed that fatalities increased this year by 1,696, to 25,580. The increase far outpaced the 0.6 percent increase in total miles driven this year. “There is a relationship between the economy, gas prices, driving and fatalities,” said Jonathan Adkins, deputy executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “However, the increase can’t be explained solely because of an improving economy and more discretionary driving. Vehicle miles of travel likely didn’t increase that much in 2012. Other factors may be at play. For example, 2012 had one of the warmest winters on record. That may have resulted in a longer motorcycle riding season and more pedestrian activity and hence, more fatalities.” The preliminary data do not break down the deaths by state or the type of vehicle involved. The downward national trend had been attributed to several factors, including increased use of air bags, seat belts and other safety features, improved roadway designs, and increasing awareness of the perils of driving drunk. “Despite the increase, the country has been tremendously successful in reducing motor vehicle deaths and injuries,” Adkins said. “These successes have been achieved through the improvements in driver behavior, safer roadways and safer vehicles, and the interaction of all three.” In 2011, highway deaths dropped to 32,367, almost 2 percent lower than they were in 2010. Maryland outpaced the nation with a 2.2 percent decrease, but deaths rose by 3.2 percent in Virginia and 13 percent in the District. Maryland had 11 fewer deaths than the 496 it recorded in 2010. In Virginia, 764 people died in 2011, compared with 740 in 2010, and deaths in the District increased by three, to 27. The big increase this year was driven by a 13 percent jump in the first three months of the year. The total for April, May and June was 4.7 percent higher than in 2011. The two summer months and September saw a 4.9 percent increase.

The government’s top workers, Group 9

The annual “Sammie” awards, handed out in the fall by the Partnership for Public Service, honor federal employees for their accomplishments. The Post is profiling the 30 finalists. The nonprofit partnership provided the names and descriptions. **Peter A. Morrison** _Department of the Navy_ Designed and built the first-ever laser weapon approved for combat on a Navy ship In 2014, the U.S. Navy demonstrated the first-ever use of a laser gun aboard a ship at sea, raising the likelihood that directed energy weapons that were once part of science fiction will become a major force in the nation’s defense arsenal. Morrison, a program officer with the Office of Naval Research, led the laser weapons system project, which provides the Navy with new technology to shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles, detonate shipboard ordnance and disable small attack boats. The laser weapons system, known as LaWS, was mounted on the amphibious transport ship USS Ponce that was patrolling the Persian Gulf in the summer of 2014. Battle tests proved that it could be fired in several ways, from a warning flash to a lethal beam that can set a drone or small boat on fire with its invisible high-energy ray, and destroy other moving targets. According to military experts, the laser weapon, which is operated by a video-game-like controller, offers new levels of precision and speed for naval war-fighters facing new threats such as drones, where traditional guns and missiles would not be as effective. **Rob Thayer** _U.S. Agency for International Development_ Led efforts to deliver food to millions of people in war-torn Syria and neighboring countries As team leader of USAID’s Syrian food-assistance program, Thayer has worked closely with the United Nations World Food Program and international and local donors to provide food assistance to millions of hungry and desperate people — those caught in the crossfire within Syria and those now living as refugees in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. “Rob has been the go-to guy on Syria since the beginning,” said Dina Esposito, director of USAID’s Office of Food for Peace. The United States is the largest food donor in the Syrian crisis, having provided more than $1.1 billion in assistance so far, including monthly household food rations, supplementary nutritional food for children, more than 90,000 tons of flour for its innovative flour-to-bakeries program and food voucher debit cards for refugees. The flour-to-bakeries program, which Thayer launched, supports flour and yeast purchases from neighboring countries and enlists humanitarian groups to deliver these bread ingredients to bakeries around Syria. Bread is a pillar of Syrian society, not only for dietary purposes but also for social and cultural reasons, and is ubiquitous at mealtime. **Richard Alan Feely** _National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration_ Researched ocean acidification, which threatens sea life and the marine environment Every day, the oceans absorb 22 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, acidifying the water and threatening the marine ecosystem and the welfare of coastal communities and businesses tied to the sea. Feely, a senior scientist at NOAA, has done pioneering research demonstrating the ecological damage to the oceans and sea life from carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from human activity. He has made policymakers aware of the consequences, helped contribute to legislation and created an international network to track the effects of these emissions. Spending 1,000 days at sea on more than 50 scientific expeditions, Feely has found that an increase in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, factories and agricultural activities has dramatically changed the biology and chemistry of the oceans. He predicted that a continuation of this trend will double the acidity of the world’s oceans by the end of the century. His studies found, in part, that in some conditions acidified water corrodes the minerals that many organisms — such as oysters, clams, scallops, lobsters, crabs, shrimp and sea urchins — rely on to build their protective armor of shells and exoskeletons.

National roundup: 172 people on cruise ship contract norovirus

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 172 people on a cruise ship arriving in California on Sunday have fallen ill with the highly contagious norovirus during a nearly month-long trip. The Crown Princess has more than 4,100 people on board and were expected to be met by CDC staff upon arrival in San Pedro. Princess Cruises has “enacted our stringent disinfecting protocols” developed in consultation with the CDC and will do a deep cleaning of the ship and terminal in Los Angeles before departing Sunday night for a week-long cruise through the Mexican Riviera, spokeswoman Susan Lomax said. In April, 129 people on the same ship contracted norovirus during a seven-day cruise off the California coast. Lomax said the ship went through the same stringent disinfecting process after it docked. Symptoms of norovirus include vomiting, diarrhea, fever and body aches. According to the CDC, most people recover within three days. The 28-day cruise visited Hawaii and Tahiti. **— Associated Press** An off-duty officer was fatally shot early Sunday at a pub in northeast Ohio after he approached a patron described as “unruly” who was carrying a firearm, police said. Four other people also were shot at the Papa Don’s Pub in Akron about 2 a.m., Police Chief James Nice said. One of the victims was another off-duty police officer who was grazed by a bullet. Three patrons were hospitalized with possibly life-threatening injuries. The deceased officer was identified as Justin Winebrenner, 32, a department member for more than seven years. Nice did not release the names of the other victims but said the three hospitalized included two men and one woman. Kenan Ivery, 35, of Akron, was arrested and charged with one count of aggravated murder and five counts felonious assault, Nice said. Police Capt. Daniel Zampelli said Ivery was being treated at a hospital for injuries he suffered at the pub. Winebrenner was engaged and had a 4-year-old daughter, Nice said. He is survived by his father, a retired Barberton police officer. **— Associated Press** A man standing with his wife on a Bronx subway platform was pushed onto the tracks Sunday morning by another man and was struck and killed by a train, police said. The assailant fled. Police said an unidentified man pushed Wai Kuen Kwok, 61, of the Bronx off the platform at the Grand Concourse and East 167th Street station in Highbridge, an act that appeared to be unprovoked. Kwok was struck by a southbound D train about 8:40 a.m. and pronounced dead at the scene. His wife was not injured. There was no indication that Kwok knew the man or had an altercation with him before he was pushed, police said. Witnesses told police they believed the man fled the subway station after shoving Kwok and boarded a city bus. **— Associated Press** **— From news services**

Instagrammers bragged about cruise to ‘peaceful’ place. Then cops found 95 kilos of cocaine.

Isabelle Lagace, 28, and Melina Roberge, 22, turned their public Instagram feeds into travel journals, filling them with boasts about their intercontinental adventures on the MS Sea Princess, a cruise ship bound for Australia. But their journey came to an abrupt end after the ship berthed in Sydney Harbour: It was there the women were arrested Sunday along with a 63-year-old man named Andre Tamine.  On Monday, the trio appeared in court in Sydney, charged with importing a commercial quantity of cocaine, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, authorities said. The street value of the cocaine, which authorities said was found packed in suitcases: about $23 million.  (Commenters have left taunting — and occasionally obscene — messages on the Instagram photos since Australian officials announced the bust.) The three Canadians had boarded the Princess Cruises ship in Dover, England, in July, and then embarked on a 49-day voyage.      Princess Cruises, which is based in Southern California, said the passengers aboard the Sea Princess visited 17 ports in 11 countries before they  arrived Sunday in Sydney. There, Australian Border Force agents climbed on board the 77,000-ton ship and started searching among its 1,008 guest cabins with help from drug-sniffing dogs, authorities said. Fitzgerald, the Australian Border Force commander, told reporters that officers found 35 kilograms in the women's cabin and 60 kilograms in the man's cabin, according to the Associated Press.  It's still unclear whether the two women were working with Tamine and why the Canadians were suspected out of some 1,800 others on the ship for smuggling. But Fitzgerald said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Canada Border Services Agency helped identify the three Canadians as "high-risk passengers." Authorities are investigating to determine whether the three brought the drugs with them or picked them up somewhere along the way, according to the Associated Press. Indeed, the ship stopped in Colombia and Peru — two of the world's top cocaine-producing countries. A Princess Cruises representative told The Washington Post that the company "provided full support" to law enforcement agencies. "Princess Cruises security personnel are highly trained and closely cooperate with government agencies, customs and border patrol, immigration and police services worldwide on an ongoing basis," a company statement read. "As a global cruise company, we take this role seriously and always assist the authorities when called upon. "As a matter of course all passengers, crew and their luggage are screened using a variety of methods. An investigation is underway and because this is a matter currently before the court in Australia we cannot comment further." Authorities alluded to their work with an international drug syndicate. "These syndicates should be on notice that the Australian Border Force is aware of all of the different ways they attempt to smuggle drugs into our country and we are working with a range of international agencies to stop them," Australian Border Force Assistant Commissioner Clive Murray said in the statement.  Last year, Australian law enforcement agencies made more than 105,000 illicit-drug seizures and 133,000 illicit-drug arrests, according to the report. It said that more than 3,200 were cocaine seizures.  Still, the market for cocaine in Oceania, the cluster of Pacific Coast islands north of Australia, has been booming. The market there has more than doubled over the past decade with "Australia accounting for 99 percent of total cocaine seizures in the region from 1998 to 2014," according to the U.N.'s report.  Authorities said this week's seizure was a joint operation by Australian Border Force and Australian Federal Police. “Today’s successful operation has resulted in three arrests and we will not rule out further activity as we continue our investigations," Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Shane Connelly said in the statement. The suspects are due back in court Oct. 26.

Prison crowding undermines safety, report says

In the company of killers, bank robbers and corrupt politicians, federal prisons might be a more interesting site than your average government workplace. Less safe, too. A recent Government Accountability Office report on the Bureau of Prisons says inmate overcrowding undermines the safety of the agency’s staff, as well as that of the inmates. “BOP officials reported increased use of double and triple bunking, waiting lists for education and drug treatment programs, limited meaningful work opportunities, and increased inmate-to-staff ratios,” the September report says. “These factors, taken together, contribute to increased inmate misconduct, which negatively affects the safety and security of inmates and staff.” The prison facilities are crowded because the inmate population is growing faster than the bureau’s capacity. As the prison population grew 9.5 percent from 2006 through 2011, the agency’s capacity, increasing at 7 percent, didn’t keep up. Even with new facilities, the prison population grew from 136 percent of capacity to 139 percent, according to the GAO. “Nearly all BOP facilities had fewer correctional staff on board than needed, with a BOP-wide staffing shortage in excess of 3,200,” the GAO said, citing a 2010 Justice Department study. While crowding has increased, the inmate-to-staff ratio has gone down. Fewer officers is not a strategy for success. The consequences can be real and bloody. “Serious correctional worker understaffing and prison inmate overcrowding is causing a significant increase in dangerous inmate-on-worker assaults,” Dale Deshotel, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals, told the House Judiciary Committee in December. In his written statement, Deshotel said “illustrations of this painful reality include: (1) the savage murder of Correctional Officer Jose Rivera on June 20, 2008, by two prison inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Atwater, CA.; (2) the brutal stabbing of a correctional officer on April 23, 2009, by a prison inmate at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, IN.; (3) the brutal stabbing of a correctional officer on November 1, 2009, by a prison inmate at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, PA; and (4) the more than 350 vicious inmate-on-staff assaults that have occurred at various BOP institutions since the murder of Correctional Officer Rivera.” In fiscal year 2010, there were almost 1,700 assaults on bureau staff, according to an April 2011 GAO report. The bureau did not respond to requests for comment on the GAO report. In an Oct. 2 letter to Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said “for safety purposes, BOP critically needs high security prison capacity.” “The negative effects of overcrowding on safety are even more pronounced in high security facilities that house the most serious offenders,” Holder wrote. “Nearly 90 percent of these inmates have a history of violence, and nearly 70 percent have been sanctioned for violating prison rules. Assaults on BOP staff are higher at high security prisons than at lower security facilities.” Much of this bad news could be better if Uncle Sam had greater flexibility in reducing his prison population. A number of states have done more than the federal government in modifying their sentencing policies. “Because of the mandatory minimum sentences required for many federal offenses and the absence of parole for most federal inmates in the federal system, BOP generally does not have the authority to significantly adjust an inmate’s period of incarceration,” the GAO said in September. Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, an organization that supports reforms in sentencing policy, said New York and New Jersey each have reduced their prison populations by about 20 percent over the past decade. New York has modified its drug laws and allowed reduced sentences for inmates who participate in drug treatment programs. New Jersey has focused on reducing parole revocations. “There is a sharp divide” between the approach of states and the federal government toward incarceration, Mauer said. State budget pressures are “forcing them to confront these issues” in a way not present at the federal level, he added. So what can be done at the federal level? The bureau does have the Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP), but crowding and underfunding reduce its effectiveness. Inmates who successfully complete the program can get a sentence reduction of up to a year. It sounds good on paper, but “RDAP programs are full,” says the GAO, “and BOP cannot keep up with demand for RDAP enrollment” because of staff and budget shortages. Congress made some progress on reforming drug sentencing laws with the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which lessened the severe sentencing discrepancy between federal crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses. But the changes were not retroactive, so some offenders remain imprisoned with sentences based on a 100-to-1 disparity in the way crack and powder were treated for sentencing purposes, despite a law that recognizes that fundamental unfairness. Reforming sentencing laws is one option the GAO listed for addressing crowding, along with allowing alternatives to incarceration, providing greater sentencing flexibility and increasing capacity. Something needs to happen soon. As Mauer said: “It’s not a good situation for anybody involved.” Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

Is it safe to travel to Paris and other European cities?

Jocelyn Holgado knew that her reservation at the Hôtel de Varenne in Paris was nonrefundable. But then the terrorist attacks on Paris happened, and the world suddenly felt more dangerous, and she figured the Varenne might make an exception. Holgado, a nurse anesthetist from Burlington, N.J., figured wrong. Even though she was scheduled to check in only two days after the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 129, and even though her online travel agency, Expedia, tried to negotiate a refund, the hotel responded to repeated requests for an exception with a firm “Non.” “Out of concern for our safety and the fact that France had closed its borders and major attractions, we elected to postpone our trip,” Holgado says. Many travelers are faced with the same questions. Is it safe to travel, particularly to Europe? If I go, what should I know? If I cancel, what will I lose? Travel may seem riskier, particularly in light of the worldwide U.S. State Department alert issued last week, which cautioned of a “possible” risk to travelers from the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and other terrorist groups. The government warned that the groups are planning terrorist attacks in multiple regions. “While the new terrorist attacks in Western Europe are troubling, it remains one of the safest areas in the world,” says Scott Hume, associate director for security operations at Global Rescue, a travel risk and crisis management firm. “Statistically, car accidents and illnesses are still the greatest threats to travelers — not terrorism.” Still, experts say you should pay closer attention to the news before and during your trip. At a time of heightened security alerts, travelers should review the State Department’s Alerts and Warnings page. Better yet, sign up for the government’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Plan (STEP), which allows the government to track your whereabouts and warn you of any potential dangers. Don’t rely exclusively on the government for information, however, says Robert Richardson, author of the book “Ultimate Situational Survival Guide: Self- Reliance Strategies for a Dangerous World.” Richardson advises travelers to do their homework. “You can learn a lot about potential threats just by researching areas that you plan on traveling through,” he says. Terrorists sometimes make specific threats that they subsequently carry out, he says, “so be aware of what’s being said and take it seriously.” Travel insurance doesn’t always cover terrorist attacks. Experts say you should check for a terrorism-related clause before purchasing a policy. Some allow you to cancel and receive a refund, but the incident must happen within a specified time period and close to the place you plan to visit. “Cancel-for-any-reason” policies are more expensive but guarantee that you will be refunded a percentage of the cost of your trip. Timing is important when it comes to terrorism and insurance. A covered event has to happen after you buy the insurance. “Even though Brussels was recently under a high terror alert, no terrorist acts have occurred, so travelers with plans to visit the city are still eligible to purchase travel insurance with terrorism coverage,” says Rachael Taft, a spokeswoman for Squaremouth.com, a travel insurance site. Of course, it’s too late to buy travel that will let you cancel existing reservations on the basis of the November attacks. “However, a future attack would most likely be covered under most policies,” Taft says. It’s extremely unlikely that you’re going to be injured in a terrorist attack. But knowing the resources at your disposal in the worst-case scenario can give peace of mind before your trip. Travel insurance should take care of any medical expenses, according to J.C. Lightcap, who runs the website Travel-Safer.com. Most travel insurance policies “should cover you for medical and evacuation expenses in the event of a terrorist attack,” he says. “Some will even fly out a spouse or significant other if you’ll be hospitalized for a week or more.” More danger requires better planning. That would include identifying a safe haven outside your hotel. “A safe haven is any place where you know you can go to be safe, like a restaurant,” says Spencer Coursen, a security adviser and private protective strategist. Restaurants usually have land lines, too, so you can make phone calls if cellular service is disrupted. Decide with members of your party on an agreed-upon place to meet if there’s an incident that separates you. Keep the number of the U.S. Embassy’s 24-hour hotline in your cellphone, and be sure to test it, because international dialing codes can be tricky. Airline policies can vary in the wake of an attack. Mary Hall, a business manager from Lakeville, Minn., contacted Icelandair after her daughter’s school trip to Paris was canceled. “We had no say in this decision,” she explained. “The reservations had been made by the teacher coordinating the trip, so we were not even aware of the cancellation policies.” Icelandair sent her a form response, offering either a 50 percent refund or a rescheduled flight within four months, as long as she booked before her original flight was to depart. After the attacks, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines waived some change fees for flights to France for a limited time. They didn’t offer refunds, except for canceled flights, and there’s no assurance that they will waive change fees for a future attack. “The statistical probability of your getting caught in a terrorist attack while traveling abroad is minuscule,” said Ronald St. John, the co-founder of Sitata, a travel safety website. “If you’re simply uncomfortable traveling, remember that it’s your vacation, and you need to do what makes you happy.” Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United.   E-mail him at chris@elliott.org. **Read more fromTravel:** Read past Navigator columns here

FAA computers vulnerable to hackers, GAO report says

The Federal Aviation Administration has fallen short in its efforts to protect the national air traffic control system from terrorists or others who might try to hack into the computers used to direct planes in flight, according to a government report released Monday. The Government Accountability Office report credited the FAA with taking steps to deter hackers but concluded that “significant security control weaknesses remain, threatening the agency’s ability to ensure the safe and uninterrupted operation of the national airspace.” The FAA said it intends to implement the 14 changes recommended in the GAO report. In a written response to the GAO last month, Keith Washington, acting assistant secretary for administration at the Department of Transportation, said the FAA already had achieved six “major milestones” toward improving cybersecurity and agreed with the GAO recommendations for improvements. A central finding in the GAO report is that the aviation agency has not fully put in place an organization-wide structure to protect its computers from attack. The report says threats to the air traffic control system are growing from terrorists, criminals and foreign governments. The GAO withheld details of specific security vulnerabilities. Air traffic controllers are responsible for the average 2,850 flights aloft at any given moment. The 14,000 controllers work in three types of facilities: 500 airport control towers that oversee landings and takeoffs; 160 facilities that direct planes to and from cruising altitudes; and 22 centers that supervise aircraft at cruising altitude. The most serious threat would come if hackers broke into the system and found a way to disrupt the flow of aircraft without being noticed. A breach that was detected immediately, however, would be less likely to significantly compromise operations, experts said. “The system is designed with contingency plans for a shutdown of any particular system,” said Steven B. Wallace, an aviation safety consultant who formerly directed the FAA office of accident investigation. When fires — as in a recent incident in Chicago — tornadoes or other issues cause the rare shutdown of a facility, there are plans in place to transfer its responsibilities elsewhere in the system. “Is it conceivable that a hack could go systemwide? I doubt it,” Wallace said, while acknowledging that ingenious hackers could strike anywhere. “I don’t know which computer system you couldn’t say that about.” The GAO said, however, that as the FAA moves to implement the collections of computer-based systems known as NextGen, there will be increased integration of the FAA’s national air system computers, “creating a greater need to secure these systems from remote, external threats.” The FAA needs to do a better job of controlling access to computer systems and establishing multiple firewalls to protect against unauthorized intruders, the GAO said. It also should enhance encryption of sensitive data and ensure that employees and contractors take required security training. “A fundamental cause for these various weaknesses is that the FAA has not yet implemented an effective program for managing organizational information security,” the report said. The FAA has created a cybersecurity steering committee, but the report said its work was hindered by disagreements between the agency’s technological office and the air traffic control group.

A Russian jet flew within 20 feet of a Navy surveillance plane. The Pentagon says it was routine.

A Russian jet flew within 20 feet of an U.S. Navy surveillance plane this week, but U.S. military officials said Friday that they consider the event to have been conducted safely and professionally. The maneuvering occurred Tuesday over the Black Sea in international airspace, U.S. military officials said. Navy Capt. Pamela Kunze, a spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Europe, said in a statement that U.S. and Russian aircraft and ships “routinely interact” and that “most interactions are safe and professional.”  Kunze did not call the incident an “intercept,” but said it occurred during “routine operations.”  Kunze said that distance is only one variable considered in defining what the Pentagon considers to be a safe and professional flight. Others include speed, altitude, rate of closure and visibility. “Every event is unique and any single variable does not define an event,” Kunze said. “It is up to the commander of the vessel — whether ship or aircraft — to evaluate all of the variables and assess each interaction individually.” The number of incidents in which U.S. aircraft have intercepted Russian long-range bombers off the coast of Alaska has spiked recently, after a period in 2015 in which the Russians had the majority of the bombers down for maintenance. The United States and Russia have both characterized those incidents as professional, and the U.S. military has said that Russia has not entered American airspace. Last fall, the Russians buzzed a P-8 over the Black Sea in another incident that the Pentagon did consider unsafe and unprofessional. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said at the time that the two planes came “extremely close” during a close-range intercept.

Another GAO report says the U.S. government is facing a shortage of skilled workers

Shortages of employees with certain crucial skills and the pending loss of many experienced workers to retirement remain major management challenges for the government, although progress has been made in some areas, according to a report issued Thursday. What the Government Accountability Office has called “strategic human capital management” remains on its high-risk list, where it has been in every such biennial report since 2001. “Addressing complex challenges such as disaster response, national and homeland security, and economic stability requires a high-quality federal workforce able to work seamlessly with other agencies, levels of government, and across sectors,” the report said. “However, current budget and long-term fiscal pressures, coupled with a potential wave of employee retirements that could produce gaps in leadership and institutional knowledge, threaten the government’s capacity to effectively address these and many other evolving, national issues,” it added. The GAO said that about 30 percent of federal employees as of 2011 will be eligible to retire by 2016, the long-predicted “retirement wave” of the relatively older and longer-serving workforce. According to a White House budget document, 22 percent of federal employees are 55 or older, compared with 18 percent in the private sector. Office of Personnel Management data show that almost three in 10 federal workers have 20 or more years of experience with the government. The GAO said the potential loss of expertise due to retirements is especially worrisome for some agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Small Business Administration; in some occupations, such as air- traffic control; and at more senior levels. Nearly three in five senior executives will be eligible for retirement in three years, it said. Agencies, meanwhile, continue to suffer from “skills gaps” in certain crucial occupations, the GAO said. These include cybersecurity, at a time when “threats to federal information technology infrastructure and systems continue to grow in number and sophistication,” and management of contracts, which “have become more expensive and increasingly complex,” the report said. Other areas of concern include aviation safety, oversight of oil and gas activities, and various defense-related occupations. The GAO added, however, that the OPM, individual agencies and Congress have focused on identifying and addressing shortages of high-priority skills. In addition, the OPM “has taken steps to improve the federal hiring process, with the aim of making it easier for people to apply for a federal job and strengthen the ability of agencies to compete with the private sector for filling entry-level positions.”

GAO criticizes Pentagon’s satellite networks; Marriott to use Micros systems

The Government Accountability Office said in a new report that the Pentagon is increasingly using stand-alone satellite control networks, which operate a single satellite system, rather than using shared systems that can operate multiple kinds of satellites. As a result, the GAO found, the Defense Department is paying more and potentially creating redundancies. The report found that the GAO could adopt commercial practices, such as making the networks interoperable and automating routine functions, to save money. The GAO recommended that government buyers of future satellite programs analyze whether it makes more sense to use a dedicated network for satellite control or rely on a shared system. **— Marjorie Censer** Columbia-based Micros, a provider of reservation and cash register systems for the hospitality and retail industries, said last week it signed a deal with Marriott International for the hotelier to use its property management system at its 3,800 locations worldwide. The company’s cloud-based OPERA Property Management System helps hotels manage daily activities such as reservations, accounting and billing. Micros provides similar technology to more than 30,000 hotels around the globe, the company said. Its systems can also be found in quick-service restaurants, casinos, entertainment venues and retail operations. Bethesda-based Marriott, one of the nation’s largest hotel operators, manages properties in 74 countries, according to the company. **— Steven Overly**