Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Shortly after 5 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 28, security guards Earl Pegram and Babatunde Ogunbanjo lowered the Transportation Department flag outside Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, symbolically ending the 37-year relationship between the two agencies.

Or not, if you ask Coast Guard officials, that is. "Our perspective has been that we aren't leaving DOT," says Rear Adm. Harvey Johnson, who guided the Coast Guard's transition out of Transportation and into the Homeland Security Department. "It's not like a divorce here, or a separation."

If Johnson was feeling a little separation anxiety, you could hardly blame him. Together since 1967, the Coast Guard and Transportation had come to depend on each other for services big and small. In Washington, Transportation provides Coast Guard employees with everything from day- care for their children to the security badges on their shirts. Coasties, in turn, help staff DOT's intelligence office and carry out a variety of transportation missions, including ice-breaking, aid in navigation, and safety inspections.

So when President Bush proposed last June that the Coast Guard leave DOT and join a new Homeland Security Department, employees and other stakeholders naturally wondered how the split would take place. Bush officials quickly stressed that the service would retain its transportation missions, meaning the Coast Guard and Transportation would continue to have some kind of relationship. Inside the service, officials set about to define it.

By October, Johnson's team of eight planners had identified 170 services that the two organizations provided for each other. Virtually all of these would still have to be performed by someone-Transportation, the Coast Guard, or the new Homeland Security Department-after March 1, the move-out date set by the White House. Transportation officials did their own analysis of the relationship under the guidance of Ellen Engleman, then-administrator of Transportation's Research and Special Programs Administration. Engleman, who had served on some of the initial homeland security transition teams, was tapped by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to run DOT's side of the reorganization. She is now chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

After the homeland security legislation was signed in late November 2002, both sides were ready to hash out who would do what as of March 1. At Transportation, Engleman's conference room became transition mission control. Six workstations were set up, and Donna O'Berry, a GS-14 attorney with Transportation who would be Engleman's field general, moved in across the hall.

O'Berry and her staff tracked down subject matter experts for each of the 170 services. After discussions with their Coast Guard counterparts-many of which took place online-they would decide who should provide the service after March 1. In many cases, Transportation had to continue a service because the Homeland Security Department was simply not ready to assume the day-to-day tasks of administering a department. "When you get down to some of these other matters, like who provides payroll and who runs the bus, it may take a while before they can set those up," says Johnson. From parking to purchase cards, Transportation will provide for Coast Guard employees for the foreseeable future.

In a few cases, the Coast Guard decided to start handling a service itself. For example, Transportation had helped the service conduct background checks on prospective employees, but the Coast Guard will now handle the entire process, says Johnson.

From Jan. 2 on, planners raced to meet weekly deadlines for resolving which entity would handle which parts of the 170 services. They faced other deadlines as well. Feb. 14 was the deadline for deciding what Transportation property-from printers to paper clips-should accompany the Coast Guard to the new department. "We worked nights, we worked weekends, we came in on holidays," remembers O'Berry. "We lived on M&M's."

As the weeks went by, O'Berry's admiration for her Coast Guard peers only grew. "I never worked with a more professional group of people," she says.

Staffers were able to make decisions on all but five of the 170 services, a credit to the close relationship between the two agencies, say Engleman and Johnson. The last five issues, which involved the Coast Guard's continuing role in the transportation system, were resolved by Coast Guard Commandant Thomas Collins and Deputy Transportation Secretary Michael Jackson at a Feb. 27 meeting.

Because the Coast Guard was moving intact, it had an easier transition than some agencies and units that were split apart as they shifted into the new department, according to Johnson. "If you talk to people at APHIS and Customs, they're pulling their hair out on things they have to do to connect into the Homeland Security Department, and for us it's much easier," he says.

Still, the transition involved a huge amount of work that was finished on time. Engleman, who credits Mineta for setting the tone for a smooth transition, takes pride in what her employees did. "We didn't hire consultants, we didn't contract it out, we did this on our own and we also kept the department running at the same time," she says.