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Pandemic Preparations at the Department of Homeland Security?
If the scandals involving the VA hospitals and what we have recently learned concerning the incompetence of the CDC under the direction of political appointee Thomas Frieden have not caused you to wonder whether there is anyone in the Obama Administration whom you can trust, you might want to read about the latest Inspector General’s report concerning mismanagement in the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Department of Homeland Security’s independent government watchdog told a House panel on Friday that the Health and Human Services Department has “mismanaged” money and efforts to address a possible Ebola outbreak.
It continues:
As a result, the agency may have wasted millions of dollars on some equipment and drugs, while not spending enough on other needs.
“DHS purchased much of the equipment and drugs without thinking through how these supplies would need to be replaced,” Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.
If this sounds a bit tame, just read on. The details are not reassuring.
The audit found, for example, that DHS has a stockpile of about 350,000 white coverall suits and 16 million surgical masks but hasn’t been been able to demonstrate how either fits into its pandemic preparedness plans.
And while the agency has a significant quantity of antiviral drugs, Roth said that “without a full understanding of the department’s needs in the event of a pandemic, we have no assurance that the quantity of drugs will be appropriate.”
The inspector general also found that drugs stored at multiple DHS sites weren’t being kept in a temperature-controlled environment. Because of this, the agency is recalling a “significant quantity” over concerns that the drugs’ safety and effectiveness may have been compromised.
“Drugs and equipment have gone missing, and conversely, our audit has found drugs in the DHS inventory that the department thought been destroyed,” Roth said.
Read the whole thing. The truth is that nearly everything that the DHS has stockpiled has passed its expiration date and has not been replaced.
Published in General
In management as in life, people respond to incentives. In management, those are frequently called metrics, and choosing the wrong metrics can drive perverse, sometimes pathological behavior.
My guess is there are a lot of GS and SES types who in the last ten years have gotten bonuses and promotions for “quantifiably” improving the material readiness of the CDC by creating this doomsday hoard, albeit with no plan to either use or lifecycle the stock.
Large bureaucracy fails…
Sounds like somebody finally figured out that Ebola is a “crisis,” and somebody needed to take advantage of it.
Storm in a tea cup. Hand sanitizers have expired!! Quick, someone impeach Obama.
So let me get this straight: they did exactly what you and others (who are obviously experts in disease control) criticized them for not doing: i.e. preparing for an unlikely eventuality. So they went out and bought a bunch of stuff that they didn’t know how or when was going to be used. I.e., an unlikely scenario.
But then of course, when the unlikely scenario doesn’t come, these things expire.
But of course, you’ll accuse them of incompetence no matter what they they do
If they don’t waste money buying stuff for something that is unlikely to happen, but instead deal with the issue when it arises, you accuse them of incompetence for not being prepared.
When they do waste money buying stuff for something that is unlikely to happen, but the stuff eventually goes bad as it doesn’t happen, you accuse them of incompetence for being too eager in being prepared.
[Comment Edited for CoC]
And that’s the real issue here. Is this a “problem” inherent in any large organization tasked with dealing with an unexpected and unlikely situation, or is this a “problem” of politics?
Because all these criticisms are criticisms which can be made on any organization run by humans, whose task is with dealing with unlikely situations. By definition, all measures of preparedness will be lacking, and hence can be criticized for both doing something and not doing something.
But of course, this begs the question: what’s the alternative? There is no alternative. All human organizations that are going to be large enough to deal with such problems, will have bureaucratic costs. All human organizations dealing with unexpected situations, will have shortcomings.
Hence, the criticisms are rather pointless, unless you’re someone studying organizations, and you’re interested in figuring out how human or organizational biases work.
If the intent, however, is to score cheap political points by pinning this on your political opponents (even though the same thing happened during your own political rule), and ignore the basic facts of how human organizations work…then this is the end result. A series of “criticisms” that anyone can easily make ex-post, but which are pointless and meaningless.
For what it is worth, I can affirm that the conditions outlined by Dr. Rahe above were consistent with what I observed as an operational planner at DHS (2008-2009). Furthermore, as a member of a strategic-level consequence management asset in support of the country’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) response plan (2000-2002, 2011-2013), I know from first hand experience that the level of readiness to meet operational challenges such as the current Ebola response vary widely based upon the depth and extent of the bureaucracy.
Given this, the conditions described in the DHS IG report ring sound and true to me. I suggest that emergency readiness is inversely proportional to the number of government agencies involved.
Cheap political points? My, my, AIG . . . in your world, no one is responsible for anything.
We have elected officials. They appoint people to run the bureaucracy — lots of people at lots of levels. And you would relieve them of all responsibility.
If “by definition, all measures of preparedness will be lacking,” then I guess that nobody should ever bother to prepare. All that I can say is that, in the private sphere, if no one is prepared to deal with a problem that has been anticipated, heads will.
Is this your view of the VA scandal as well? Of the obvious incompetence of the leadership in the CDC? Of the failure of the State Department to provide for the security of our personnel in Benghazi? Of the mess that Barack Obama has made of our foreign policy in relation to Russia? the Middle East? China?
I guess that your motto is: “The Buck Stops Nowhere!”
Do you not understand that the post describes the findings of the “Department of Homeland Security’s independent government watchdog?” And that Dr. Rahe did not say what you attribute to him?
The “brilliance” of your “position” is that it only requires you to “defeat” the strawmen you conjure. It’s getting tiresome.
Hear, Hear.
Ricochetti, yes it’s true AIG is a bit confrontational, what with the sarcastic intro and the “cheap political points” and such. But look at the content of 5 and 6. Nowhere is he/she relieving anyone of responsibility. He gives us a succinct and insightful explanation for why bureacracies – especially governmental bureacracies – don’t work very well at all.
And he extrapolates from that the truth that it doesn’t really make much difference whether those bureaucracies are in the hands of Democrats or Republicans or anyone else. It’s a Madison thing. Bureacracies don’t work well so long as men are not angels. And its a reality thing. Spending energy on blaming the ‘other side’ for not adequately preparing for the unpredictability of events is not a high-minded approach. It only sidetracks us from reasoned response.
Anyway, give AIG a re-read. If you can divorce the content of 5 and 6 from the issue of the moment and see it from a larger perspective, it should be somthing that all Ricochetti will find quite meaningful. I certainly do. It is for such pieces of writing that I come to Ricochet.
PS, and it’s also for such things as the Black Prince’s snippet of Yeats in comment 1. Join me in liking 1, 5, and 6!
This is nonsense. If citizens do not raise holy hell when those responsible for administering large bureaucracies fall down on the job, if they do not hold elected officials responsible for the failures of those they appoint to run those bureaucracies, then they will fail.
In private enterprises, when something like this happens, heads roll — as they should. If we do not demand good government and hold responsible those who give us bad government, then we deserve the bad government that we get.
You know what isn’t a high-minded approach? Attacking Dr. Rahe for saying things he never said and accusing him of failing to understand things he clearly understands.
Dr. Rahe has made it abundantly clear over the years that he knows far better than most that failures of this sort are endemic to and inevitable in the progressive/big government approach. See, for example, his posts in 2012 regarding the fact that Mitt Romney is not a small government conservative but a managerial progressive.
In response to other posts, AIG has taken the position that Dr. Rahe and others who share his views can’t criticize the CDC because we’re not doctors. Now he lectures us:
It’s quite clear who’s trying to “sidetrack” us.
Dr. Rahe, I pretty much agree with everything you said in 13. In fact your comment and mine seem to me complementary.
iDad, you might be getting me and AIG mixed up a bit. I have never attacked Dr. Rahe. I just drew attention to AIG’s excellent explication as to why govermental bureacracies don’t work very well.
Unless I’m missing something, it seems PR and AIG share a lot in common. I’m kind of surprised at the animosity. Have I unwittingly come into the middle of some dispute with some ‘history’ behind it? If so, that might explain some of the assumptions being made here.
Matty – I wasn’t suggesting you had. I was disagreeing with your characterization of AIG’s position.
iDad, I see. Sorry for the confusion. Common problem for me.
However, notice that I don’t disagree with you on the part of AIG’s post that gets a bit chippy. In fact, I refered to that in the first sentence of my comment:
“…AIG is a bit confrontational, what with the sarcastic intro and the “cheap political points” and such.”
That, for me, is quite extreme in terms of badmouthing someone by the way, just in case you don’t think that is strong enough.
The rest of AIG’s explanation on the nature of bureacracy is excellent and, in fact, corresponds quite closely with what Dr. Rahe himself has said about bureacracies. The only point of disagreement would seem to be that AIG and I give more credence to the opinion of doctors on this, a medical issue, than do most people at Rico.