Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jan 2001
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
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Author: Stephen Barr

THE CUSTOMS CHALLENGE: IMPROVEMENTS TO MAINTAIN, AND PLENTY LEFT TO DO

The U.S. Customs Service came a long way in a short time under Raymond
W. Kelly. The next commissioner will undoubtedly find Kelly a tough act
to follow.

But the Kelly legacy also should provide the Bush administration with a
snapshot of the difficult management problems that Customs and many
other agencies face. How the new regime handles management challenges
and engages employees to fight these battles will be one of its early,
key tests.

"It is difficult to come in and make things happen," Kelly said last
week. "I like to think I was able to move the organization and bring
about change, and change is hard to make happen inside the Beltway."

Kelly -- a former Marine who served in Vietnam and then worked as a New
York police officer for 31 years -- began by focusing on the agency's
nearly 20,000 employees. He preached that every Customs agent, inspector
and employee should always be seen as acting professionally and fairly
when dealing with the public.

Kelly especially sounded that theme throughout 1999, when Customs was
swept up in controversy over whether the agency engaged in racial
profiling when conducting strip searches of airline passengers returning
from overseas trips.

He overhauled agency procedures for targeting international travelers
suspected of smuggling cocaine and heroin in their clothes and in their
bodies. The employee handbook on search policy was updated; no search
now takes place without the approval of a supervisor. He called in
outsiders to review his changes and consultants to make more
recommendations.

He put employees on notice that he would hold them more accountable for
their actions. He established an office to provide better training for
employees and set up a partnership with the Columbia University Graduate
School of Business for managers. He ordered up a new agency logo and new
uniforms.

Kelly pushed to get law enforcement status for Customs inspectors (about
13,000 agency employees carry a weapon to work). He created a support
staff to assist families of employees injured in accidents and natural
disasters.

When Customs inspectors wrestled a suspected terrorist to the ground at
Port Angeles, Wash., in December 1999, Kelly quickly brought the team to
Washington for an awards ceremony that drew national news coverage.

But Customs still faces an array of institutional problems that Kelly
could not overcome in his 2 1/2 years as commissioner. Many of the
problems are common to other agencies, such as:

* Competing goals. Customs collects more than $20 billion in revenue
from imports and enforces 400 trade laws. At the same time, it tries to
prevent the smuggling of drugs into the country.

* Outdated technology. Customs will likely need more than $1 billion to
build a new computer system, but progress has been slow. Congress and
the Clinton administration disagreed over how to finance the project,
and Congress wanted assurances the money would not be wasted.

* Antique rules. Some of the agency's rules can be traced back to
100-year-old laws, creating confusion about what records and data
collection are absolutely necessary.

* Staffing woes. With global trade growth projected to double the
agency's workload in the next five years, Customs finds it increasingly
difficult to properly deploy personnel to process passengers and inspect
cargo at ports of entry. The agency has hired a contractor to help
develop a "resource allocation model."

Kelly thinks the next commissioner should "institutionalize a lot of
things we have put in place. It shouldn't be allowed to drift back."

He recommends a comprehensive business review, what he calls "a clean
sheet of paper examination of all its processes. They are mired in the
practices of the 19th century, not the 20th century."

Despite the amount of change still needed at Customs, Kelly said the
agency is "a more professional, more responsible, better-run
organization than when I came in. . . . It is a great organization, and
I tried to make it realize that greatness."
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