Covid-19 led to over a million deaths in the USA and disrupted travel. It also underscored the need for a dedicated communicable diseases preparedness plan for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
TSA Preparedness Plan
In February 2024, TSA published the Transportation Security Preparedness Plan to Address the Event of a Communicable Disease (known briefly as the TSA preparedness plan). Now, a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), published on April 9, says TSA has taken steps to implement the TSA preparedness plan. For example, TSA has updated field office planning guidance to include elements of the plan and intends to conduct exercises by the end of 2025, according to officials.
GAO found that TSA was slow to distribute the TSA preparedness plan to certain partners, including federal departments and agencies, TSA’s workforce and the traveling public. The agency acknowledged this oversight in December 2024 and has since distributed the plan to all partners.
Federal alignment
Overall, GAO found that TSA coordinated with other agencies to help ensure its plan aligned with existing federal plans. To do so, TSA reviewed documents, spoke with officials at several federal agencies and requested feedback from these agencies on a draft of the TSA preparedness plan. According to TSA documents and officials, the agency reviewed approximately 80 documents, including related plans from other federal agencies.
It is worth noting that the TSA preparedness plan is intended to complement the forthcoming Department of Transportation (DOT) national aviation preparedness plan for communicable disease outbreaks. TSA officials told GAO reviewers that they coordinated with DOT while developing the TSA preparedness plan and reviewed a draft of the DOT national aviation plan. Based on the version they reviewed, the TSA officials stated that each plan has a different purpose. According to TSA officials, DOT’s forthcoming plan is intended to help prevent an infectious disease from being transmitted into the USA from an international source, among other things, whereas the TSA preparedness plan focuses on the protection of its workforce and the traveling public. TSA officials state that they plan to review the national aviation preparedness plan once published to ensure the TSA preparedness plan remains complementary.
Training and exercises
GAO’s report notes that airport personnel are to conduct annual tabletop exercises of their tactical response plans. In addition, officials told the watchdog that field components are to revise all tactical response plans to reflect the updated template by the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025.
TSA told GAO that it expects to incorporate the preparedness plan into the TSA training and exercise cycle, which is to occur every three years. TSA headquarters officials have stated that the agency intends to exercise the TSA preparedness plan by the end of 2025, but that their priority is to exercise plans pertaining to more urgent threats first, including cyber and drone attacks.
Read more about DOT’s national aviation plan for communicable diseases here.