Pros
The purpose of this agency has the potential to truly help the American People. Working with stakeholders from across the country gives you a better understanding of the crucial role that CISA can have to ensure the resiliency and continuity of our way of life. There is always something new to be learned regarding our nation's critical infrastructure, every day you either find out how strong we are as a nation or how close we are to to total collapse. The ability to work across the spectrum of government is always enlightening, different agencies and people have a plethora of ways to solve and look at the challenges ahead. The Regional Teams are a tight knit community of professionals, who can think on their feet and truly support each other. They are the face of the agency who operate with little direction and constrained support and manpower and are able to accomplish great things.
Cons
There are no standards on how to measure yourself against your peers or how to measure the success and effective of the agency. You will continue to hear that we are a new agency and are still coming up with these standards and practices, four years later. Human Resources is a touchy subject in this agency. The Office of Human Capital is plagued by the culture of mediocrity for years. Numerous people have had pay and retirement deduction issues. Hiring and advancement practices are somewhat dubious as well, with accusations of nepotism and favoritism being a constant concern. Even after you get a position offered, there has been delay of up to year or more before actually onboarding. There seems to be an inability for the different sections to be able to talk to each other. There is also seems to be a schism being developed between the Cyber and Physical areas of the agency, Political Leadership seems to be all in on Cyber and there is a feeling of being neglected by the Physical Security employees. Senior Leadership seems more worried about how the agency looks versus how competent it is when it comes meeting our Nation's needs. Although we as a workforce understand many of the initiatives that Political Leadership are implementing, they are being carried out in a heavy handed way which has negatively effected the morale of the workforce. It also does not help when Political Leadership has told the workforce that if they don't like their methods they should feel free to leave.