Stephanie Rowe: 100 percent secure air travel not possible

agencies. Is the key then to change hiring priorities to find people with these types of skills?

Rowe: I think the answer is twofold here. One is development – really partnering with acquisitions more effectively. They really need to take the time to figure out what they want and if I were designing the ideal software I would have acquisitions folk more involved. I saw a challenge sometimes where there was a gap between what incentivized the acquisition people and what incentivized the mission people. Both competent, both very bright and effective in terms of their individual roles were. But I felt what was lacking was a common position on what to buy.

Secondly, I think the government, at least from my experience at DHS, really needs to broaden the pool it hires from and use more outlets in terms of resources for hiring. For the most part I found TSA people hiring out of USA jobs. I think it is a great resource and a great tool. But I worked ten years in commercial manufacturing and I did not know USA Jobs existed. So as a potential candidate who has done large scale implementation, if I were even interested in helping government and contribute my skills, I did not even know that that was a place to go. From the government’s perspective I think they are missing a whole view of the world by limiting where they recruit.

HSNW: On a final closing note, with the implementation of these large data systems, what is your one key takeaway or piece of advice that you would give to technology consultants as they help implement these systems?

Rowe: I would say they really need to take the time to understand the mission space and all of the complexities that go into it. I had worked at Accenture and managed programs from January of 2001 almost the entire time until I left in 2005 to join TSA, so I thought I really understood the complexity and the pressure. But it turns out once I actually became a fed that I realized that I did not understand this as well as I thought I did. It became much more apparent to me as policy chair about what are all the regulations, the authorities, and what you need really need to worried about from a privacy perspective.

I learned very quickly that the technology was not the hard part. The hard part was defining it and taking the time to clearly define your operating model, how you are going to operate your mission, and then understanding how that needs to work in context with all of the regulatory and acts that govern the agencies. So understanding the authorities and how you can operate in that environment is key.

Also, consultants really need to understand the political nature of Washington. Consultants cannot underestimate how the government must account for politics, because for better or worse the Hill heavily influences how the executive branch operates. I do not necessarily think that consultants really understand the political complexity of the Hill.