Candor at TSA’s Checkpoints
We hope it proves sustainable, but we’re certainly impressed at the start of the Transportation Security Administration’s new blog, Evolution of Security. TSA Administrator Kip Hawley posted a credo for the blog that expresses what all business and organizational blogs should be, but sometimes aren’t: Forthright, credible and engaging.
“Our ambition,” Hawley wrote on the new blog, “is to provide here a forum for a lively, open discussion of TSA issues. While I and senior leadership of TSA will participate in the discussion, we are turning the keyboard over to several hosts who represent what’s best about TSA (its people). Our hosts aren’t responsible for TSA’s policies, nor will they have to defend them – their job is to engage with you straight-up and take it from there.”
In a word, candor. For an agency faced with as much vexation among its “customers” – the traveling public – as TSA is, offering to be candid and responsive in blog postings is both courageous and inspired. We hope it’s also credible over time, and proves decidedly a style for other agencies to emulate. On paper – or, rather, computer screens – Administrator Hawley’s manifesto expresses how strong, responsive blogs should indeed be conceived and maintained, for the benefit of their sponsors, readers and responders. Happy conversations, TSA!