The FBI's Funding Issues

Abstract
This paper addresses the FBI and its agents lacking funds to live in major cities where they must work. The major issue is the lack of control within the FBI and the risk that agents will fall to corruption.
Introduction
With the FBI in dangerous territory due to budget restrictions and funding issues, the fear that the Director faces is one that could undermine the entire Bureau. If the Bureau cannot afford to pay its agents fair wages, those agents—who are privy to all manner of intelligence—become susceptible to fraud, bribery, kickbacks, and other types of corruption just to make ends meet. Already this is being seen with cases of FBI agents like Robert Lustyik, convicted of bribery (Clark, 2015; Huynh, 2015). Preventing this type of situation would be the best type of control to implement, as the situation presented in the case given to the Director is what that calls for immediate preventive action. However, concurrent controls and feedback controls might also be of use in the situation. Regardless, the present budgetary issues that the FBI agent cannot be fixed simply and the problem exists at a much more fundamental level: the FBI is having an image crisis; its brand has been damaged considerably (most recently in the Russiagate scandal surrounding the Trump Administration). Former FBI Director James Comey’s brush-it-under-the-rug approach to the Clinton-Lynch tarmac scandal on top of Clinton’s email/servergate scandal—on top of the Uranium One scandal (Solomon, 2017), along with the Clinton Foundation scandal—has all culminated in the FBI becoming one of the least trustworthy “deep state” apparatuses in the country (Scott, 2017). In order to obtain the public funding it needs to keep its agents adequately paid and to keep them from going rogue just in order to make ends meet, the FBI has to clean up its image, reshape its brand, and begin to appeal to the public once more. If the FBI can enhance its image, it is more likely to obtain more public funding in the future and thereby prevent its agents from veering towards corruption.
Major Issues
The major issues in this case are that the FBI is depleted of funds to adequately pay its agents. It is depleted of funds because it is overstretched and underfunded as a dual-result of 9/11 and a perceived lack of public support for the FBI in the face of scandals related to obstruction, bribery, cover-up and so on. The FBI has a “trust” issue as far as the public is concerned, and that translates into legislators being less willing to hand over more tax payer dollars to the Bureau.
Law enforcement is incredibly monopolistic—but among law enforcement agencies, it is also incredibly and fiercely competitive. Agencies are competing for federal funding; they even hold fundraisers in order to obtain the type of money they need just to keep operations going (FTC, 2016). The CIA had the Marshall Plan with its deep pockets to help get the Cold War running. The FBI in the 21st century is not so fortunate. Its reputation has come under more and more scrutiny ever since 9/11—which it failed to prevent, leaving many constituents wondering what good an investigative agency was that could not even identify a group of terrorists plotting the greatest terror attack on U.S. soil in U.S. history. The rise of power of the NSA and DHS following 9/11 further exacerbated the FBI’s issues, drawing much needed funds away from the Bureau and depleting its coffers. Now the Bureau finds itself in a death spiral: the less it is able to pay its agents, the more likely the nation is to see repeats of reputation-blacking incidents like Lustyik’s. The more those occur, the less favorable the Bureau is going to appear to the public. The less favorable it appears, the less likely it is to have more public funds earmarked for its operations. It is a death spiral that ends in total collapse—and the current trend is only getting worse as the Russiagate fiasco continues to play out with nothing to show for it but the obvious free pass given to one of the country’s most corrupt politicians.
Control
Three types of controls that relate to this case are: 1) preventive, 2) concurrent, and 3) feedback. Preventive controls are also known as feedforward controls, which enable a Director to identify and prevent problems ahead of time—i.e., before they become worse problems that will negatively impact the whole firm. Preventive controls could be utilized in this situation in terms of hiring, as in ensuring that only agents who have good records, are not prone to corruption, and hold upstanding values and demonstrate virtue. Another manner in which this type of control could be implemented, however, can be seen with regard to the FBI’s branding issues: the problem of funding would not be so problematic were it not for a loss of trust in the agency and in the government as a whole (Warren, 1999). Preventing the loss of what is already gone does pose certain logistical issues; therefore, either of the other two controls could be employed more reasonably.
Concurrent controls refers to the monitoring of situations so as to guarantee that quality is not diminishing. In the case of the FBI, concurrent methods could be employed so as to keep check on agents in the field. The aim of the concurrent approach is to implement performance standards and regulations that help to guide and direct worker attitudes, worker beliefs, and worker actions. Concurrent methods help to develop an appropriate workplace environment and culture that promotes principled leadership among workers. It also erects a framework by which performance can be measured, assessed, evaluated and altered until the desired effect is achieved. In terms of agents who are posing a problem with respect to corruption, concurrent controls would enable the Director to identify the problem and implement a change management process to address the issue.
Feedback controls are similar to concurrent controls in that it involves a process of constantly reviewing information and data sets to see that performance is up to standard. However, it is more mechanistic in its approach than concurrent controls and places most of the emphasis on ensuring that goals are met; whereas concurrent controls can have an effect on worker morale and worker perspectives and ultimately on workplace culture and worker outcomes. Feedback controls can be of use in terms of effectively providing a system whereby continual monitoring is in place, but in terms of identifying problems and implementing a solution at the human level, this type of control could fail to address the issues as they are present in the case of the FBI.
Clearly the FBI has already lost control of the situation—as is evident by its funding issues. If it cannot afford to pay agents a decent salary so that they can live and work in expensive cities, the most immediate course of action to help control the situation is either to lay-off agents (which could be problematic as laid-off agents could more easily be tempted to go rogue) or to move the agents from their offices in pricey cities to more reasonably priced parts of the country. This, however, poses its own problems—namely, that agents are needed in popular cities where prices are higher.
Conclusion
Recommendations
The situation is not easily remedied and at this point, the death spiral could well be said to be underway. However, concurrent control systems could be implemented to prevent the situation from worsening. It would allow for adequate monitoring of the Bureau, its agents, and their activities to ensure that if any agent is beginning to show signs of disloyalty to the State, the Director will know about it. At the same time, this type of control can help the Bureau to better effect a culture within the firm that promotes values, principles and ethics that are in keeping with the public’s perception of how government officials should conduct themselves.
Supporting Opinions
Supporting opinions do exist to help give this recommendation weight. Already, the FBI has been a concurrent shift within its organization to address needs and issues that are pertinent not only to the Bureau but also to the welfare of the American public. In order to be seen as relevant in the 21st century, the FBI has adopted a strategy of counterterrorism to help address the issues of global terror and how they impact the homeland (Mueller, 2003). The need for concurrent control in the Bureau is evident and the nation demands it so as to prevent another or worse terror attack on American soil. To prevent such from happening, the FBI must respond internally to address its own shortcomings and ensure that its agents in the field are of the right mettle to stand up to temptation and carry on the fight for the principles that best represent America.

References
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FTC. (2016). Fundraisers calling on behalf of police and firefighters. Retrieved from
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0085-fundraisers-calling-behalf-police-and-firefighters
Huynh, A. D. (2015). What Comes after Get a Warrant: Balancing Particularity and
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