© David Burton 2015

     At a congressional inquiry into the Takata airbag failures airbags that have killed at least eight people and injured more than 100 others, “Lawmakers were . . . sharply critical of the performance of federal regulators overseeing auto safety, citing government investigations that found the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had mishandled inquiries about Takata airbags, as well as the long-delayed recall at General Motors last year of defective cars tied to at least 117 deaths.
     One committee member . . . sharply criticized the safety agency for seeking more government funding while it tries to overhaul its recall and investigative processes characterized as ‘broken’ in a report by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.
     “ ‘This isn’t about resources,’ {the committee member} said of the agency’s request for more money. ‘This is about blatant, incompetent management.’ ” (Ref. 1)

     The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) received a failing grade in a 42-page report released by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General. NHTSA knew the hammer was getting ready to fall when earlier this month it admitted it has failed the American driving public.
     “Now the inspector general audit has confirmed what many outside organizations--including CarComplaints.com and the Center for Auto Safety--have complained about for years: NHTSA has been letting auto manufacturers run the show.
     “First there is the issue of consumer complaints. In what can only be considered as pathetic and damning, the report confirmed the very agency charged with evaluating consumer auto complaints wasn't even reading most of the complaints.
     “The report says NHTSA has ignored about 90 percent of the 330 complaints submitted daily from concerned consumers across the U.S. Screeners who do read the remaining complaints don't do a good job and although each person is told to look for problem trends, half said they don't.
     “Secondly, numerous problems have plagued NHTSA and how it handles consumer complaints, including the form used to make a complaint. The audit found many complaints don't include enough information for NHTSA to even know what system or part of a car has the problems.
     “The staff of people who determines if an investigation should be conducted have received little or no training in their so-called areas of specialty. With the addition of the computer chip to vehicles, many of these areas are very technical and complex, yet the people have no training to handle complex subjects.
     “When deciding which safety problems to investigate, NHTSA employees have historically focused on issues that are most likely to result in recalls, even though the people doing this job are not trained for these responsibilities. Furthermore, when it's determined an investigation shouldn't be opened, NHTSA doesn't always document the justifications for its decisions not to open the investigation.
     “The report also concluded NHTSA staff are not properly trained or supervised to handle much of anything, and while a training plan is supposed to be in place, the plan has never been implemented.
     “The audit used the GM ignition switch failures as an example. In 2007, NHTSA considered a request to investigate airbags that failed to deploy in GM vehicles, but the agency decided against the investigation without saying why.
     “In the case of NHTSA not realizing and understanding millions of GM cars had defective ignition switches for over 10 years, the audit gives numerous examples of NHTSA's failures.
     “Just one example comes from June 2007, when GM provided NHTSA with a State trooper’s report that identified the 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt’s ignition switch as a possible cause of a person killed when the airbag failed to deploy. Two people at NHTSA reviewed the report in 2007, but they ignored the link between the ignition switch and airbag failure.
     “Additionally, and incredibly, NHTSA officials admitted they had no idea under what conditions the airbags were supposed to deploy.
     “The report says NHTSA has repeatedly failed to hold automakers accountable for their actions and instead of doing its job, NHTSA applied an 'honor system' to automakers. A good example is Honda and its actions concerning reporting death and injury claims in its vehicles.
     “Officials knew for years there were serious inconsistencies in early warning reports submitted by Honda, yet NHTSA ignored the problems until 2014. After complaints and prodding from the Center for Auto Safety, Honda finally admitted it failed to report 1,729 deaths and injuries for a period of 11 years.
     “It seems the NHTSA honor system didn't work out too well, and Honda was fined a total of $70 million for its failures.
     “The inspector general’s audit makes 17 recommendations for NHTSA to get its act together, something the agency said it will do by June 2016.” (Ref. 2)

     Government agencies must be held accountable for their performance. It is imperative that meaningful performance objectives be established and then periodically reviewed for relevance and currency. Performance standards must be delineated in accordance with these objectives and the agencies and their personnel must be reviewed on an annual or more frequent basis to verify that they are achieving the desired results. Incompetents must be terminated – both at the working and managerial levels – and overachievers must be rewarded. If necessary, whistleblower incentives should be increased. In cases where death or injury results, consideration should be taken for criminally prosecuting those bureaucrats whose action or inactions were either directly or indirectly the cause. Failure to reasonably perform one’s job should be a prosecutable offense.

     Airport security is another example of a government agency failing to do its job, in this case the federal agency is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). “An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, [Emphasis mine] ABC News has learned.
     “The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system.
     “According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints. [Emphasis mine]
      - - -
     “More recently, the DHS inspector general’s office concluded a series of undercover tests targeting checked baggage screening at airports across the country.
     “That review found ‘vulnerabilities’ throughout the system, attributing them to human error and technological failures, according to a three-paragraph summary of the review released in September.
     “In addition, the review determined that despite spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time.” (Ref. 3)

     Another federal agency that has been found to be seriously failing in its mission is the Internal Revenue Service, the much despised IRS. Most recently that agency was accused to have improperly targeted conservative groups. Six investigations were started to look into the allegations.

     “But there is a bigger question about America’s least-loved federal agency that rarely gets asked: Is the IRS, which collects 90 percent of the nation’s revenue, up to the basics of its job?
     “The surprising answer is that it often is not. A {Boston} Globe review of dozens of government reports and audits, as well as interviews with key officials, found a series of fundamental problems:

• “The IRS makes billions of dollars in potentially fraudulent payments because it lacks the ability to check whether many returns are accurate before refunds are mailed.
• “The IRS relies on tax preparers to file accurate returns on behalf of taxpayers. But many preparers are not required to receive training and can be declared a tax professional by paying a $64.25 fee to the IRS. . . .
• “The IRS is increasingly impenetrable to taxpayers with questions and complaints. The agency is so short-staffed it cannot answer nearly 40 percent of phone calls, and it has failed to meet its own 45-day deadline to respond to millions of letters per year from taxpayers. . . .
• “The decision by Congress to cut the agency’s budget over the past four years by more than $1 billion, designed to save money, has had the reverse effect. The loss of about 10,000 employees, more than 9 percent of the workforce, has shrunk collections by $8 billion. In other words, the budget cut increased the deficit.

1. Lawmakers Spread Anger in Recalls Over Airbags, Bill Vlasic, The New York Times, 23 June 2015.
2. NHTSA HAS IGNORED 90 PERCENT OF CONSUMER AUTO COMPLAINTS, David A. Wood, carcomplaints.com, 22 June 2015.
3. EXCLUSIVE: Undercover DHS Tests Find Security Failures at US Airports, Justin Fishel, Pierre Thomas,
   Mike Levine and Jack Date, ABC News, 1 June 2015.
4. IRS is America’s feared and failing agency, Michael Kranish, The Boston Globe, 17 February 2014.
5. Fighting Telemarketers: When Do-Not-Call List Fails, These Strategies Work, Alan Farnham, abc NEWS,
   21 January 2014.
6. Does It Feel Like The ‘Do Not Call’ List Isn’t Working? This May Be Why, CBS San Francisco,
   20 November 2014.
7. Does the 'Do Not Call' List Even Work?, Jim Handy, Forbes.com, 27 February 2013.
8. DANGER OF CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT: CDC FAILED TO DO ITS ONE JOB, John Nolte, Breitbart,
   15 October 2014.
9. Congress says hacked federal agency 'failed utterly and totally' to protect data, Reuters, The Guardian,
   16 June 2015.
10. A fatal wait: Veterans languish and die on a VA hospital's secret list, Scott Bronstein and Drew Griffin, CNN,
    23 April 2014.
11. Veterans dying because of health care delays, Scott Bronstein, Nelli Black, and Drew Griffin, CNN,
    30 January 2014.