US: TSA PreCheck program to speed security lines needs more workers doing background checks, report says

The TSA’s push to enroll 25m people in its expedited screening program has fallen short, mainly because the agency failed to assign enough workers to review applications, a federal report found. The TSA has failed to keep pace to meet its goal for TSA PreCheck, the agency’s key program to get airport security lines moving faster, primarily because the agency didn’t anticipate how successful its marketing efforts would be and didn’t staff accordingly, according to a new report by the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The program launched in 2013 and has so far enrolled 5.6m fliers. The TSA has set a goal of enrolling 25m travelers by 2019. TSA PreCheck is designed to pre-screen low-risk passengers, such as business travelers, to focus the TSA’s limited staffing on all other passengers. Travelers who are approved to be PreCheck members can use a special expedited lane at most of the nation’s airports. To meet the goal of enrolling 25m, the agency spent more than $3.7m over the last three years on an advertising campaign, touting the benefits of the program. A five-year membership for TSA PreCheck costs $85. Although the campaign more than tripled the applications for the program last year, the Office of Inspector General said the TSA had a backlog of applications because the agency didn’t employ enough staff to manually check applications that require extra review.<br/>