Coats: Pre-Check Spending on TSA’s “Randomizer App”

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Dan Coats (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, today delivered his 41^st Waste of the Week speech and highlighted how the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) paid IBM more than $47,000 to develop an app that determines whether a person goes in the left line or the right line at the airport.

“The app is a ‘randomizer app’ and it does just two things: it points an arrow to the right or it points an arrow to the left,” said Coats. “I am not an expert on coding, but those who develop apps and code have stressed how easy such an app like this is to write. Randomization coding is one of the first things developers learn, and creating a nearly identical app to this one can be done in about 10 minutes.”

The $47,400 spent to develop the app is well over the average yearly income of a Hoosier and more than the average starting salary of a TSA security screener. “What other ways could we ‘randomly’ select lanes without actually requiring the TSA employees to make a choice?” said Coats. “We could flip a coin – heads you go left, tails you go right. This type of egregious waste has to stop. Perhaps it’s time to ‘pre-check’ these programs before we fund them.”

To watch this week’s installment of Waste of the Week, click here.