The Department of Homeland Security has several top-level management vacancies, including director-level postions with responsibilities for disaster management and preventing terrorist attacks.

Among the vacant positions are the heads of the Operations Directorate and Science and Technology Directorate, the chiefs of which have recently turned in their resignations, and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, now being headed temporarily by R. David Paulison, better known as Mr. Duct Tape, after Michael Brown resigned as FEMA chief.

And the Federal Air Marshal Service recently got a new director after Thomas Quinn resigned. Most everyone in the service hated the guy, and they aren’t too sure about the new guy, either. FAMS is hiring air marshals, by the way.

Brown has said in recent media interviews that he knows candidates who have turned down offers to be the permanent FEMA chief because they believe the agency is in too much turmoil.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown’s claim is “not true.” He said the department wants to install a new management team at FEMA that includes a new director, deputy director and chief logistics officer.

“It’s not just a director that we’re looking to bring on board,” Knocke said. “We’re looking at a package of senior veterans that can come in and really help to lead the agency and continue to retool the agency with 21st century capabilities and get as much of that accomplished by June 1 as we can.”

Knocke added that nobody has been offered the FEMA jobs yet, though the department hopes to fill them as quickly as possible. “We’re very close, and we hope to be able to be talking more about this with the public in the very near term,” he said. — Government Executive

And it’s entirely possible this time around that they might start actually looking for people with relevant experience, rather than simply people who are in with the Bush administration.

Several months into his job as Homeland Security’s undersecretary for preparedness, George Foresman said that based on discussions with the DHS secretary and deputy secretary, and knowledge of the system, he is confident that the person appointed FEMA director “will have the appropriate credentials” to reassure Congress and the public.

Foresman, confirmed for the job in December 2005 and previously the preparedness and homeland security adviser to the governor of Virginia, told members of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology that, while the new FEMA leader needs to have crisis management skills, those abilities could be gained through a wide variety of experience, including work in law enforcement and firefighting. — Government Executive

It remains to be seen, of course, whether the new people to come on board will be another set of Bush cronies or people with actual experience relevant to the jobs they’ll be hired to do. You can cross your fingers and hope that it’s the latter, but I will predict right now that DHS will get yet another set of ineffective bureaucrats. That, after all, is the way government works.