Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 Source: Washington Post (DC) Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company Contact: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071 Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ 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." - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk