Transition as if your life depended on it—not only your life but potentially the lives of millions of Americans.

That is the mantra inside and outside the Nebraska Avenue complex these days as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) faces its first presidential transition since the 208,000-employee agency opened its doors in 2003. Weathering its first handover of the reins was hard enough—from inaugural Secretary Tom Ridge to present chief Michael Chertoff in 2005—but this one’s big. And the conventional wisdom says these days that terrorists don’t wait for senate confirmations.

“It’s important to realize that major terrorist attacks, both here and abroad, are often launched before or after national elections or inaugurations,” declared Deputy Secretary Paul Schneider in the department’s online Leadership Journal.

Fully aware that the eyes of the Washington establishment, not to mention all the state and local partners, are on them, agency officials have been quietly pulling together the department’s human resources, trying to stave off resignations and shifting key career people into senior executive positions ahead of the elections. They have tapped outside transition experts and, while deflecting critics and skeptics, are trying to assure members of Congress that the department is doing everything possible to ensure a seamless handover in January.

“I am pleased that the Department of Homeland Security appears to be taking planning for the presidential transition so seriously,” said Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), who sits on the Homeland Security and Governmental Reform Committee.

Academic experts and officials agree that the key to a smooth transition is having leadership with institutional knowledge remain in each of the agency’s 24 components while future under secretaries, assistant secretaries, directors and other appointees undergo the often sluggish confirmation and approval processes.

Patronage concerns

There are concerns about the fitness of the department to accomplish this. Since the department’s inception, critics have often cited an unusually high level of political appointees and the questionable levels of experience among them. The 2004 Plum Book, issued by the Office of Personnel Management every four years, found that, at the time, DHS had 350 political appointments among its staff of 180,000. This compared to 64 appointees at the Veterans Affairs Department, which had 235,000 employees at the time.

Now these “plum” appointees will be leaving, and the question arises whether there is enough non-political staff in the head offices to ensure continuity until new appointments are made.

Chertoff and other DHS officials have been saying for months that they’ve already taken these concerns on board.

“We have populated the major parts of the department now, almost all of them—if not all of them—with career people, senior career people in the number two or number three positions so that when the political appointees leave there will be people in place to continue the continuity,” he told homeland security bloggers in an online Q&A in April.

In response to a query from HSToday, Elaine Duke, under secretary for management, said that, looking specifically at leadership positions, there are only 82 political appointees across the department now, and 45 of them are at headquarters. “Of the headquarters positions, approximately 50 percent are in the immediate Office of the Secretary and the Office of Policy,” she stated.

In October, the department put into place a new “succession order and delegation authority” for the leadership positions at the component head level. The new scheme demands a higher career-to-appointee ratio for each of the agency’s departments, with every deputy secretary now a career civil servant—a goal Chertoff and Duke insist they are fulfilling today, though officials declined to provide current numbers.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), head of the House Homeland Security Committee, has balked at what he calls a lack of detailed transition plans provided to Congress, though Chertoff insists his principal deputies meet about once a month with Thompson and others on the committee.

Thompson has also invoked rumors swirling since January that the department was allowing current appointees to convert to career employee status ahead of the changeover. “There’s a term called ‘burrowing’; that’s where individuals who are in appointed positions are given civil service positions,” Thompson wrote in a February letter to Chertoff asking him to put a stop to any appointee-to-career conversions.

In an interview with Federal News Radio, DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner responded directly to Thompson’s letter and suggested he had his facts wrong. “I imagine this would be cleared up quickly, but it is unfortunate that this is a very misleading letter, mischaracterizing the department’s efforts to ensure there is a smooth transition with our career civil servants, who have, in most cases, been here for many, many years.”

Thompson’s office at the committee did not return calls for comment. Meanwhile, some homeland security experts have suggested that by selecting specific career people for the number two slots now, Chertoff may be trying to extend his influence into the next administration.

“The incoming administration may well ask whether or not the career person was appointed on the basis of merit or on the basis of political connections,” Paul Light, a Brookings Institute government expert, told The Wall Street Journal back in January.

Even if new civil servants were former appointees, this doesn’t necessarily reflect an ulterior motive on the part of the outdoing regime, said Richard Weitz, a homeland security expert at the Hudson Institute. Cases vary.

“It happens all the time,” he said. “If you have good people in place, it’s worth it to keep them,” he added.

Like others who talked to HSToday, including committee aides and former DHS officials, Weitz believes the agency is “doing everything it can” to ensure that it gets through the next year with relatively little disruption.

Beyond personnel

Aside from personnel issues, the Homeland Security Advisory Council—a mix of DHS staff and non-agency experts—said the department needs to work with Congress to expedite Senate confirmations and find ways to step up background checks, clearances and other processes to get key appointees in place under the new president.

The department has also commissioned outside organizations, like the Council for Excellence in Government, in its transition effort. The center has devised a bipartisan panel and is setting up workshops to ensure that career employees who are put in acting undersecretary roles “are ready to respond to a major emergency during this transition period,” said President Pat McGinnis.

They’ve employed the assistance of security professionals like Ray Kelly, New York City Police commissioner, and James Loy, former Secretary Ridge’s deputy.

“This is unusual to begin this early and to focus in so many ways on the transition. I think [DHS] should be congratulated for this,” McGinnis said. “Whether it is adequate, I think time will tell.”