Transportation Security Administration Chief David Pekoske on Monday issued an Innovation Doctrine for his agency that at its core is aimed at developing a workforce culture keyed toward finding new ways to add innovative ideas and capabilities quickly to help the agency achieve its mission.
“This is designed to help TSA remain a cutting-edge, world-class agency, focused on empowering the workforce, industry, academia, and allies to possess the imaginative & ingenuity to shape the future of transportation security,” Pekoske tweeted.
An executive summary of the 16-page Innovation Doctrine, the agency’s first, says an empowered workforce will “proactively seek and present ideas,” remain transparent throughout the process, and accept that failure is part of this process.
The doctrine outlines four building blocks of innovation, including creating an enterprise level system for innovation that is repeatable, scalable and systemic for testing and implementing ideas and solutions. The second block is planning a lot of “small bets” by “developing and testing low risk but scalable solutions to find ones that work.”
And if something works, the doctrine calls for “rapid implementation” to keep pace with the threats by using the various acquisition mechanisms at the agency’s disposal.
The final building block is growing “ecosystems” where the agency, industry, government, academia, associations and international partners collaborate to “co-evolve capabilities around a shared set of technologies and principles.”
The doctrine doesn’t address the agency’s acquisition budgets, something Pekoske said he plans to put more emphasis on given that two of TSA’s near-term priorities, next-generation carry-on baggage scanners and advanced credential authentication technology, are facing slow rollouts due to constrained funding.