Aviation Security: TSA's Revised Cost Comparison Provides a More Reasonable Basis for Comparing the Costs of Private-Sector and TSA Screeners

As Congress requested, this letter discusses the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) efforts to address our January 2009 recommendation to TSA to improve its methodology for comparing the cost and performance of screening services at commercial airports using private-sector screeners under the Screening Partnership Program (SPP airports) and at airports using federal screeners (non-SPP airports). Our January 2009 report identified some design strengths in TSA's analysis comparing the cost and performance of screening services at SPP and non-SPP airports, such as recognizing that cost savings would be limited by the mandated structure of the program, but also identified 10 limitations in TSA's methodology that could affect the accuracy and reliability of the cost and performance comparisons, and its usefulness in informing future management decisions. We recommended that if TSA plans to rely on its comparison of cost and performance of SPP and non-SPP airports for future decision making, the agency should update its analysis to address the limitations we identified. TSA generally concurred with our findings and recommendation.