Recent Entries
Oct 25, 2009 Jake's Posts
As I noted earlier this week there has been a significant reduction in the coverage of private security in the mainstream media of late. This is most likely due to the fact that in the U.S. at least it’s all-hands-on-deck to cover the impending health care reform legislation. But, the lack of negative headlines can also be attributed in part to the general lack of incidents worthy of reporting as well. For that, everyone across the industry can take a piece of the credit. Well done.
An interesting story has developed recently outside of San Diego, California where a local college has decided to end their contract to utilize a local training facility owned by U.S. Training Center, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide.
The college’s governing board voted unanimously to stop using the ‘Blackwater facility’ in direct response to public criticism, presumably of the facilities affiliation to Blackwater, now Xe. Local activists have protested at Southwestern College board meetings for months in an effort to halt the college’s arrangement with U.S. Training Center and it now appears that those efforts were successful in changing the minds of the governing board of directors.
Earlier this year Southwestern College had entered into an agreement which allowed U.S. Training Center to use rooms on their campus in exchange for time at the U.S. Training Center’s firearms ranges which are only a short distance away.
The question remains is the decision to cancel the agreement just politics and are the cadets of the police academy which Southwestern runs getting short shrift because of it? In other words what is best for the cadets who later go out into the world to enforce our laws?
I see this as a prime example of how a company’s brand is affected widely across sectors. Anyone in-the-know understands that Blackwater Worldwide’s international operations in support of the WPPS contract for the U.S. Department of State has nothing to do with their domestic firearms range businesses outside of their Moyock, North Carolina facility.
If a picture is worth a thousand words then an uninformed sound-byte must be worth ten-thousand in today’s culture. It’s a shame that the governing body has caved to political pressure instead of standing their ground on the merits of the original question and decision making processes which must have been: What facilities best prepare our cadets for a future in law enforcement? Unless a better location has magically materialized in recent months it now appears that cadets will receive inferior preparations all because the facility is ‘owned by’ Xe.
The lessons to be learned here for all PSCs is the importance of protecting your brand at all costs. What you do in one aspect of your business can easily negatively affect the public’s perception of you in other parts of your portfolio of services.
Oct 20, 2009 Jake's Posts, Uncategorized
By Jake Allen
Is it just me or has there been very few security contractor related news stories over these past few weeks? I am not complaining mind you, actually it’s quite nice to have the industry off the front pages, the blogs, C-SPAN and the nightly news. It makes you wonder how long we can keep it that way.
Matt at Feral Jundi is often talking about the application of quality systems in a manufacturing environment and how they can be useful in our own industry. This got me to thinking about a tool called Mean Time Between Failures or MTBF. Basically it’s a way of measuring the time that transpires between a system failure. It’s useful when looking at machinery for example to measure how many hours, days or months transpire between breakdowns. An low MTBF is indicative of a system which is not functioning properly. Conversely, a high MTBF is good because it illustrates that you can have long runs between breakdowns.
Here’s how the calculation works: If for example you have a system that runs for 15 days then fails, runs again for 10 days…fails, 5 days…fails. Then you would have a mean (average) time between failures of 10 days. (15 + 10 + 5 = 30 divided by 3 =10).
It might be useful to see how long our industry can go without a significant event which draws a lot of negative attention. Of course we don’t live or work in isolation, and there is an active insurgency bent on attacking and killing our members, that of course we have little control over. But we do have control over our own self inflicted wounds such as the Danny Fitzsimons case.
Bottom line gang is keep up the good work, take it one day at a time and police each other. It only takes one stupid event to bring the heat down on everyone. Focus on the mission, provide a quality service and avoid you are likely to avoid any headlines. This is the recipe for longevity in this business.
Oct 15, 2009 Uncategorized
This is one of those stories that is both heartening and sad at the same time. The tragedy of Paul McGuigan’s unnecessary death is tough to take for everyone and knowing that his daughter will never know her dad is very sobering. On the other hand it appears that mom and baby are healthy and coping as best they can. I wish them the best. -Jake-
By Cordelia O’Neill
The fiancee of a security contractor who was shot dead in Baghdad spoke yesterday of her joy and sadness after she gave birth to the couple’s first child on the day he was due to return home for good.
Paul McGuigan, a former Royal Marine Commando, died in the Iraqi capital’s fortified Green Zone in August with Australian colleague Darren Hoare.
The 37-year-old was caught up in an attack in the city’s International Zone.
A British national, Danny Fitzsimmons, has been charged with the murder of both men and is being held in custody in Baghdad.
Mr McGuigan’s fiancee, Nicci Prestage, gave birth to the couple’s daughter four weeks early, on October 4 – the same day he would have returned permanently to the UK.
Ms Prestage, 36, who lives in Manchester, said her baby, who weighed 5lb, was “the image of her father”.
“She is gorgeous,” she said. “I still can’t believe that Paul is never going to see her.
“The last few months have been an emotional rollercoaster.”
She added: “I know I have to face up to life without him but it is so very hard to. We were looking forward to being together as a family and bringing up our baby together.”
Mr McGuigan, 37, originally came from Peebles in the Borders but left in 1990 when he joined the Royal Marines.
He started working for the security company ArmorGroup Iraq in 2003, and became a personal security detail team leader. It is understood that his father, who now lives in Ireland, and his mother, Corinne, who ran a travel agency and has moved away from the area, have also seen their granddaughter.
A spokesman for the family said: “Paul’s family have met their granddaughter – a very moving experience, especially as baby looks so like their son.”
Sep 18, 2009 Uncategorized
The American Conservative’s Kelley Vlahos had what I thought was some excellent perspective on contracting in her article titled The business of war and profit: Aren’t we proud?
Pretty poignant considering that The American Conservative is not exactly the place you normally find gratuitous contractor bashing. It’s one thing to take a beating from The Nation on this subject but when TAC Magazine is on your case maybe it’s finally time to take an honest critical look at ourselves.
Kudos to Vlahos for saying what needs to be said. Most PSCs put too much emphasis on profit and not enough on staff selection, development, training, management and oversight. But the U.S. taxpayer is really to blame for not holding their government accountable.
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By Kelley Vlahos
You know what prostitutes and pimps and drugs and rape and electrocuted soldiers all have in common? You’re paying for it.
There is such a lack of outrage for the way that private military contractors have pillaged and profiteered from our nearly-decade occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan that it leaves one speechless. Almost. Thanks to whistle-blowers — at the threat of their own security, professionally or otherwise — we have been informed of some of the basest, grossest behavior coming out of the contracting world on the taxpayers’ dime today. Whether it be soldiers electrocuted by cheap, poorly installed showers by KBR and Triple Canopy, the vodka-drug- fueled pimping frat boys from the Armor Group or the gang rape of a female American contractor by her fellow KBR employees, there is seemingly no end to evidence that the proliferation of privatization has created a runaway Frankenstein of venality, arrogance, avarice and corruption and downright evil, with no restraint that I can see, whatsoever.
Take this latest bit about the Armor Group. Thanks to the Project on Government Oversight, which had the wherewithal to FOIA the goods on this group, we now know that there has been unfettered depravity — including, we heard last week, the procurement of imported, unwitting Chinese girls for sex — at our U.S Embassy. Not surprisingly, there has been a ton of finger-pointing about who knew what and when, but the fact remains that the company got its $187 million contract renewed even after allegations began to surface. Not much different than (Blackwater) Xe, which got its contract renewed in Iraq last week even as their former guards stand trial for murder and the company has banned by the Maliki government for ever working there again.
Allegations of misconduct and corruption on this level go way back — Dyncorp was accused of pimping out skinny, war ravaged girls back in Bosnia. No one seems to care. They just got another contract worth up to $7.5 billion in Afghanistan. They have contracts elsewhere in the expanding U.S footprint, including Africa.
Meanwhile, there are earnest, but ineffective attempts by members of congress to put the brakes on Frank. The Democratic Policy Committee held numerous hearings over the Bush years on these and other subjects of contractor malfeasance, to no real avail. The Commission on Wartime Contracting was created last year and has held some truly eyeopening hearings, even published a nifty report on the 240,000 private contractors now overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan and the companies they work for — but to what end? As for President Obama, who pledged during his campaign to review the troubling inflation of private contracting and to hold contractors accountable — crickets.
Read the entire article here.
Sep 16, 2009 Commentary, Jake's Posts
By Jake Allen
The more I read about our government in the mainstream media the more I realize how neither one seems to understand the differene between ‘fault’ and ‘resonsibility’. The ArmorGroup fiasco at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is only the latest incident but I will use it here because it is fresh on everyone’s mind and it is particularly illustratrative.
It’s critically important that we separate the terms fault and responsibilty. Some times a person or an entity is both ‘at fault’ and ‘responsible’ but the two are not synonyms. In other words there is room for ‘blame’ or ‘fault’ at both ArmorGroup and at the State Department but the ‘responsibility’ for what happened only comes down in one place.
There is little doubt that the antics being conducted primarily by C-shift on the expatriate guard force was nearly 100% the doing of immature and poorly supervised and lead ArmorGroup contractors. ArmorGroup is ‘at fault’ for hiring these low-end unprofessionals. They are also ‘at fault’ for not properly supervising some of the guard shift changes which left some stations undermanned for very brief periods of time. Much of the ‘blame’ for this rests with ArmorGroup itself since the contract and its execution was structurally flawed in a number of regards in terms of cost estimates, shift requirements, and the list goes on. ArmorGroup is at fault for all of this. From the original under estimates of the work to the poor management of a plan they themselves devised. Incompetence abounded, particularly at the beginning by ArmorGroup leadership in the U.S.
But ArmorGroup is not soley ‘at fault’. Similary, those as the State Department who were responsible for ’shopping’ for security services and a qualified security provider were equally clueless as to what they were actually shopping for. In the end they selected the lowest price offer simply for that reason…price. Firms like Blackwater, Triple Canopy and Dyncorp who had experience performing these services in Iraq were passed over because their prices were deemed to high. Clearly in retrospect their price estimates were much more in the ballpark than those submitted by Armor Group. Furthermore, one of State’s significant decision making criteria was whether or not any potential supplier was already working in Afghanistan and had relevant experience. ArmorGroup did not meet this requirement at the time but because their price was so attractively low a ‘waiver’ was issued so that the in-country experience requirement could be navigated around. So, from the very outset those at State must share the blame for the eventual calamity. And throughout the life of the contract State continued to hide their head in sand even when confronted with facts on the ground which to any reasonable observer would be clear alarm bells.
So if both sides are to blame then who is actually ‘responsible’? See here is the rub. Responsibility cannot be outsourced. Not by you, not by me, not by your town mayor, not your preacher, not a teacher, not your neighbor, not a police officer, not a fireman, not an electrician, not your boss and certainly not civil servants and bureacrats in our government. If you ‘have responsibility’ for something then you own it and cannot give it away. I am ‘responsible’ for ensuring that my kids get a good education. I might ‘rely’ on the local school district to make it happen but that does not abscond me of my responsibility. If they are not getting the education they need it remains my responsibility to take action.
The government of the United States of America and her Department of State are RESPONSIBLE for providing protection to our embassy staff abroad. (Take 5 seconds are read that sentence again…)
If State wants to do it themselves with DSS staff. Great.
If they want to ask the Department of Defense to ‘do me a favor and guard my embassy’. Fine.
If they decide to outsource the work to a private contractor, hey, I am all for it.
But never…ever…at any time or under any circumstances does the responsibility for embassy protection or the performance of those tasked to provide it shift away from the Department of State. Full stop. End of story. When the citizenry of our country begin to hold accountable our own government you will see dramatic improvement in the servce that government provides. Until then just watch the carousel go round and round.
Just follow this story now with this distinction between fault and responsibility in mind and notice how everyone will hold ArmorGroup ‘responsible’ when in truth they were really only partly to blame. You can shirk your tasks but never your responsibility. Wake the f’ up America!! If we don’t see the termination or resignation of about 6 DOS staff as a result of this debacle then you will have only yourself to blame for the next incident that occurs on your watch.
Sep 4, 2009 Industry News, Jake's Posts
Recent allegations of misconduct, failing to meet contractual obligations, (to say nothing of just general stupidity and juvenile antics) by Armor Group staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul raises serious questions about leadership both at Armor Group and at the U.S. State Department.
We’ve yet to hear anyone from Armor Group comment in detail on this case but I can just imagine the way it will sound when it comes out.
We take this very seriously…
we are investigating…
it’s an isolated incident…
we are getting it fixed…
Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, when pressed on questions of contractor behavior of his Blackwater staff likes to say, “Listen, these guys are all patriots, military veterans and professionals.” As if being a patriot and a veteran meant no oversight is necessary? It’s another way of saying, “You’re an idiot for questioning us. We could not possibly do anything wrong.”
History contains any number of idiots who were military veterans and who viewed themselves as patriots yet clearly took actions which were against the interests of the U.S. One prime example is Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted and later executed for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The point is that being a veteran does not mean you are faultless or that you don’t need oversight.
Listen, I served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and I consider that organization to hold the highest standard in military professionalism. They are the consummate ‘professional’ but at no time are they ever devoid of oversight or the possibility of prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
The command structure, the rules, regulations, policies, guidelines and standing operating procedures which are normal in any military organization do not exist to any meaningful degree within the private security/military industry. At best you have a few companies who, relatively speaking, do better than most but even that’s a pretty low standard to meet.
Furthermore, the consequences for breaking rules (that is…the few rules that actually exist) is virtually non-existent. In the U.S. military the UCMJ governs service personnel and all soldiers, airmen and Marines know that failure to comply with any lawful order, law or rule or even policy or guideline runs the risk of prosecution non-judicial punishment (NJP), or court martial under the UCMJ. Again, nothing even close to this exists within the world of private security. There really is no accountability comparable to the UCMJ and NJP amounts only to dismissal from your current contract. And we all know that this is, in reality, no punishment at all since the offender often simply pop-ups somewhere else for another firm in a matter of weeks or months.
So, in short…no rules to follow at the industry level and no consequences for failing to follow any rules which may or may not exist. If these were the ingredients for today’s dinner I doubt if anyone would be eating it.
Now then. That takes care of the industry side of the equation. What about the client side? Increasingly it is coming to light that government clients, in contrast with private clients, are systemically inept at managing the procurement, selection and oversight of security contracts. I have personally worked on contracts which have both private clients and government clients and though neither do a very good job, the government side and in particular the U.S. State Department are painfully ill equipped to do this work. The reasons for this are puzzling, especially as at this stage, after 8 years of war in Afghanistan and 6+ years in Iraq there are literally hundreds of senior contractors with multiple years of operational management experience who could be hired by State in to sit on the ‘client side’ of the table during contract negotiations as well as during the later phases of contract execution.
For decades the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Services (DSS) program was always a sleepy little backwater in the security world. It was, and to some degree still is, full of lifelong government civil servants who, despite their hard work and good intentions, have not been able to adapt to the pace and complexity that operating in a war-zone imposed on them. They got pushed into a fast-paced and complex game that they were not prepared for.
But to date this has been like asking a local high school football coach, no matter good his record has been at that level, to jump into the NFL. Oh sure, on the surface there are many similarities, the field is the same dimensions, it’s still 11 vs. 11 players and the rules are mostly the same and certainly the concepts is the same in principle. But the speed, level of complexity and knowledge and experience to say nothing of the media attention necessary to perform at the highest level make it impossible for him to take go from High School to the NFL without a natural maturation process which usually involves a stop for many years at the university level.
The DSS small staff of only a couple thousand agents oversees (and I am using that term lightly) over 30′000 contract personnel in the protection of over 200 Embassies and consulates around the world. But, the problem is that your standard, run-of-the-mill, contract and mission to protect the Embassy in Berlin or even Kuala Lumpur or Mumbai is still about three solar-systems away from what is required to protect the Kabul embassy. Kabul and Baghdad are the big leagues and the DSS has not demonstrated anything near the capability of playing on that field. They certainly do not have a commanding position of respect or authority over the security firms they are supposed to supervise. At best they are perceived as an administrative nuisance which should be avoided at every opportunity.
To some degree the State Department knows they are are in over their head and they have relied, far too heavily, on the professionalism (I use that term lightly as well…) of the private security sector to pull their bacon out of the fire. But, as I have alluded to before the professionalism they desire and frankly rely on generally just does not exist.
The State Department needs to ‘grow up’ and on-board a wave of professional staff to oversee these programs. Preferably former senior military officers with combat experience. I can guarantee that if these programs were run by retired Colonels who had on their staff retired Majors and recently separated Captains and a cadre of former Senior Staff NCOs who know how to act professionally and provide security at the same time they will be able to hold accountable any private firm who wins the contract. Having the, in-house know-how is the first step but State also needs to get a spine and have the guts to dismiss any firm who is not meeting their contractual obligations. A PSC should be pissing in their boots when a DSS officer is in his AO. But that only happens when the DSS officer knows what to look for and has the initiative and authority to do something when he sees something amiss.
What State seems to be missing is the fact that everyone in this industry wants the U.S. government as a client. The State Department is in the drivers seat here. They can have anything they want. They can drive a hard bargain and they can run roughshod over any service provider because the line outside for the privilege of winning the contract is long. You can’t perform? Next…
State’s problem is they don’t know what to ask for, how to ask for it or know what it should look like when it gets delivered.
May 7, 2009 Industry News, Jake's Posts, Podcasts
This week on Combat Operator Radio I was joined once again by Doug Brooks the President of the International Peace Operations Association. In keeping with my past couple of posts here on the blog the topic was industry regulation. Doug shared some good insight into the challenges to regulation as well as provided some insight into the various actions that are already underway. I hope you enjoy the program.
Jake
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May 7, 2009 Piracy
The small number of successful pirate attacks, an increase in military patrols, and legal concerns have kept many firms from hiring security.
Washington –Less than half a percent of the ships that transit the Gulf of Aden are attacked by pirates, and of those attacks, less than half are successful.
That statistic, reported during a Senate panel Tuesday in Washington, offers one reason why shipping firms have been unenthusiastic about using armed guards to thwart pirate attacks, leaving the problem to be solved by the US and other militaries.
“Many in the merchant shipping industry continue to assume, unrealistically, that military forces will always be present to intervene if pirates attack. As a result, many have so far been unwilling to invest adequately in basic security measures that would render their ships far less vulnerable,” said Michele Flournoy, the Pentagon’s chief of policy, at the hearing.
As with the “asymmetrical threat” posed by insurgents on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, experts have been taken aback by how quickly a small band of pirates can successfully attack large vessels with millions of dollars worth of cargo aboard. One answer is for shippers to provide for their own security, employing armed security crews to man each ship.
But those crews can be expensive and the shippers don’t necessarily want to spend the money to hire them. And despite the recent high-profile pirate attacks, shippers recognize the odds are in their own favor and essentially see any ransom they may have to pay as the cost of doing business.
About 33,000 ships sail through the Gulf of Aden each year, and there were just 122 attacks in 2008, according to Pentagon officials at Tuesday’s congressional hearing. Of those attacks, only 42 were successful.
Shipping officials also say that arming the ships could create an arms race. “Our belief is that arming merchant sailors may result in the acquisition of ever more lethal weapons and tactics by the pirates, a race that merchant sailors cannot win,” said John Clancey, chairman of Maersk, Inc., which owns the Alabama, during another recent Washington hearing.
Shipping firms are also constrained by legal rules pertaining to port entries for armed private security, as well as insurance issues. Using private security firms is “the most controversial issue that we have right now,” said James Caponiti, top official at the US Maritime Administration, at the hearing.
Still, some private security firms have offered their services. XE, the firm formerly known as Blackwater USA, is reportedly in negotiations to contract with shippers to provide a “security escort service” in the Gulf of Aden with their own 183-foot ship called the MacArthur.
In the meantime, Aegis, the British security firm, is offering a land-based sensor system that could help monitor pirate ship movements. Many experts believe the key lies in targeting the “mother ships” that are used as a base of operations, sometimes more than 400 miles out at sea.
The Pentagon is looking at what role the US should play. Last month, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged a group of officers to look at options for not only for the US military but also other government agencies, including the Departments of State and Transportation. On Monday, the group presented an initial set of findings that included offense- and defense-related solutions for ships at sea, says a military official, as well as solutions that could be effective on shore.
That includes the possibility of a combat action – one of the least desirable alternatives – as well as diplomatic and economic measures.
Military solutions have partly worked. The presence of some 28 nations patrolling the region has pushed some pirates out from the Gulf of Aden back to the Indian Ocean, says Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical intelligence for SRATFOR, an intelligence firm.
But most experts agree that military solutions alone won’t do it. The root causes of piracy stem from poverty, lack of opportunity and lawlessness, things the military simply can’t address on its own.
“Piracy, although generally considered a scourge of the world’s oceans, has its origins on land and has usually been defeated on land as a result of political and economic changes that have evolved over time,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan, who chaired Tuesday’s Senate panel hearing on piracy in Washington. “Ultimately, the solution resides ashore, not just through action on the open seas.”
In the meantime, American officials are urging shippers to take their own precautions to keep the pirates at bay. They run the gamut from rolling up ship ladders, to keeping the perimeter of ships well-lit, to installing barbed wire fences around the sides of the deck.
Nearly 80 percent of thwarted attacks were the result of ships employing some kind of defensive measure, including armed guards, according to Pentagon officials.
“They need to do some things on their own,” says one military official. “Just like … when you drive through a bad neighborhood, you roll up the windows and lock the doors.”
May 4, 2009 Commentary, Jake's Posts
By Jake Allen
Last week I was ranting about the private security industry’s lack of movement along the self-regulation front. Industry regulation is not a new theme for me and the subject most recently came up due to the UK Foreign Office’s decision not to take action on regulation. Instead David Miliband, the British Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs is calling on the private security industry to self-regulate by drafting a code of conduct and then encouraging industry participants to sign-on to it.
The problem with this model is that it is precisely what has been tried in the U.S. by the International Peacekeeping Operations Association, IPOA and their member Code of Conduct. The code itself is very comprehensive and IPOA are to be applauded for devoting so much time and energy to develop it. But, the motivation and the mechanics by which a PSC would sign-on and more importantly the authority such an agreement would have are severely lacking teeth and that lack of teeth leads to a lack of credibility.
Codes of conduct are the absolute bare minimum that a PSC should be adhering to. They are a moral floor, they are not the benchmark for industry performance. I encourage all PSCs to sign-up for IPOA membership and commit themselves to this global Code of Conduct but the fact that it is a voluntary effort can never be escaped. The whole point of this debate, in my estimation, is to develop a framework to regulate companies who themselves would likely not volunteer to be regulated.
Actually, self-regulation as such is something I have been calling for for years. But the term self-regulation is a misnomer for my purposes. I don’t any more believe that PSCs can self-regulate than can bankers or stock brokers or pharmaceutical firms or any other commercial segment of the global market. When I talk about self-regulation really what I mean to say is that the industry should show some self-leadership, particularly on the part of the biggest PSCs. These firms should step up and show some leadership and collaborate with government to identify ways in which the industry can be regulated and to take actions themselves and lead the effort in having other entities regulate them in an equitable manner. As it stands now it appears that the biggest players in the market are happy to have confounded governments in London and Washington.
What to do then?
Let me outline specifically how I think our industry should be regulated and the role that legitimate global firms should be taking to lead this effort. Many of these ideas are not uniquely my own but they are what I have been thinking about for a long time after having had a lot of discussions with colleagues as well as others, much smarter than me, who have commented on this subject.
The basic premise of my proposal centers around the creation of a ‘legimate’ market for qualified armed security service providers. By creating a regulated and legitimate market you are simultaneously creating an illegitimate or ‘black market’ for those same services. This then leaves consumers (mostly governments or private firms spending government grants) to decide if they want to purchase from the legitimate market or not. Similarly, it drives PSCs to consider whether or not they want to compete in the legitimate market or not.
Writing the Standard
The UK Foreign Office took a pass on regulating PSCs principally because by their estimation it is too difficult. I am not joking. David Miliband in his open letter for consultation says nearly point blank that regulating PSCs is difficult due to the global nature of the industry and the difficulty any single government would face in enforcing any standards, laws or penalties. Ah yes, the old ‘too hard basket’. When all other logical reasoning fails you can always just throw up your hands and say, “it’s just too hard” let’s talk about something else. Not exactly a shining moment in governmental leadership and certainly not the kind of response to a challenge you’d expect from a global leader.
In point of fact qualifying a PSC would not be that difficult. I propose to have a standard drafted in less than 24 months which would cover the majority of armed security services in the market today. It would take an additional 12 months to initially certify any UK based PSCs or any global PSCs wishing to take payment derived from UK taxpayers, most notably MoD or DFID.
How would I do it? I would form a standards committee made up of UK PSCs such as Aegis Defence, Armor Group, Control Risks Group and others. I would include representatives from other stakeholder communities in government as well as organizations such as Human Rights Watch and/or the ICRC. I would also bring in some standards drafting experts from the British Standards Institute or the United Kingdom Accreditation Society to facilitate the drafting of the standard to ensure that best practices were being applied.
I would then facilitate a series of recurring workshops where the committee members would work with existing standards such as the ISO-9001 Quality Management Standard and other general relevant international standards. I would also use the recently published Montreux Document as well as IPOA’s Code of Conduct and other relevant documents from across the PSC industry.
Look, there is any number of examples of where global industries have solved this problem or made great inroads to standardizing the level of service. The automotive sector which is also global, also deals with life-and-death consequences for poor quality and also has a very diverse and fragmented supply chain network was able to draft the TS-16949 standard. But it was done because the major automotive manufacturers took the lead in collaborating on it.
Certifying Companies
Regardless of how the standard is reached in order to ‘certify’ a PSC as conforming to the standard two separate functions must be employed; assessors and accreditation bodies.
Assessors, also referred to as auditors must be completely independent of the PSCs they are auditing as well as any other PSC in the global market. Through a mixture documentation analysis and on-site physical assessing the auditor will make a determination as to whether or not the PSC is conformant to the requirements contained in the standard. If they are then they are issued a certificate stating as much and placed on a periodic monitoring program and a recertification date in 3 years time. If the PSC is not conformant then a report is issued identifying any major or minor nonconformities and the PSC is given a period of time to take the necessary corrective actions.
Ah but who is checking the checkers you ask? That is the role of the accreditation body or society. The accreditation body issues authority to conduct audits and issue certificates of conformity to the auditing firms.
Leverage Existing Infrastructure
It sounds a little confusing but believe me this is a well beaten path with expertise all over the place which could easily be brought to bear. All of this infrastructure exists already in every country on the planet and could easily be applied to PSCs.
The International Standards Organization (ISO) in Switzerland already authors, issues and in some cases simply adopts external standards through an active committee process. The same could be done in the case of PSCs.
Global auditing firms such as the British Standards Institute (BSI), Det Norsk Veritas (DNV), Securite Generale Surveillance (SGS) in Switzerland and Bureau Veritas in France each have offices in over 80 countries and conduct hundreds of thousand of audits of other types every year. It would not be difficult for organizations such as these to get their hands on a standard and quickly come online with auditing capability.
Lastly every country already has accreditation bodies similar to UKAS the United Kingdom Accreditation Service who issue accreditation rights to the auditing firms for audits conducted on companies in operation in their jurisdiction.
So, again, developing the standard is doable and so is the execution of the audits and the eventual company certifications. We are slowly running out of excuses.
Market Conditions
In order for a system like this to work it requires that the market demand be created by states and state collective organizations such the United Nations, the African Union, the Arab League, etc, etc. This can take a long time to achieve as the decision making process in these organizations can be painfully slow and fraught with political blind-alleys. But just because it is difficult does not mean it should be shelved.
States must enact policy and legislation mandating that armed security services be purchased on the open market in an open bid process from not less than 2 qualified service providers. This is critical to the initial success of the program as it will first create demand for the certification and second add a level of transparency to the procurement process which has thus far been lacking. In the end only those possessing the certification will be rewarded by gaining access to potential revenues precluded from non-certified companies.
Major governments like the U.S. and the UK have made a strategic decision to outsource armed security in many instances. The least they can do it provide a meaningful watchdog function and ensure the their funding is spent with firms who are qualified and regulated.
A grace period
Following the successful pilot program a grace period of say 12 to 24 months should be extended to the entire market. This give PSCs enough time to get their hands on the standard, understand its implications, make any necessary changes to ensure conformity, schedule the audit and either remediate the process or receive the certificate.
Penalties must be in effect at the witching hour for companies who have not managed to conform to the standard. This is another role that governments can play in providing oversight and if necessary the enforcement in the form of financial penalties and if necessary the shutting down of companies who refuse or incapable of conformance.
The argument about the global nature being too difficult to regulate is only superficially correct. There is any number of instances where various industries have worked with governments to build cross-border regulation. And even in instances such as in financial services where both the U.S. and the UK authorities have maintained rightful autonomy there have always been a close working partnership and knowledge of what the other one is doing.
The bottom line
The bottom line here is that regulation is a subject the industry’s leaders should take active leadership in. If for no other reason than leaving it entirely to the politicians will most certainly result in an environment that is fraught with over-reaching restrictions and penalties where the good-guys end up paying the freight for the cowboy’s mistakes even more than they are already doing today.
Self-regulation is not going to fly. We’ve seen that from IPOA’s Code of Conduct. Despite IPOA’s good efforts and the quality of the content in their Code the bottom line is that it lacks wide ranging credibility because it is a voluntary exercise pre-incident and post-incident there are no financially negative consequences for simply taking your name off the signatory list.
The future of our industry is what we make it to be. If we believe that we are adding value and contributing positively to the implementation of governmental foreign policy then we must legitimize our existence by standardizing our services. In doing so we will take large step forward in minimizing the negative occurrences which though rare, reflect poorly on the entire industry.
Drafting a standard for PSCs is not difficult. What apparently is difficult to do is to marshal the political will to do have a crack at it.
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