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In my post yesterday that described CISA’s many problems, I said “The administration has stated that they want the number of employees at CISA at the end of this year to be no more than 35% of what it was in early January.” Of course, this means the administration aims to cut 65% of its January headcount by the end of the year. They’ve already cut many employees (or “persuaded” them to leave, as described in yesterday's post), but will they be able to reach their 65% goal by December?
I have good news and bad news. The good news is it seems likely the administration won’t meet that target. The bad news is it’s likely they’ll exceed it, meaning that CISA’s headcount in December will be more than 65% lower than it was in January.
Yesterday on Energy Central, where I also put up almost all of my posts, Rajeev Rautela asked, “Is there any official confirmation of the downsizing target of 35%?” I admitted I had read that figure in some online publication that I considered a credible news source, but I couldn’t remember which one – and I can’t find it now.
However, I have found three useful articles that provided me with enough information to make a good projection of CISA’s plans for headcount this year. The first article appeared in Dark Reading in March. It stated that in January, before the cuts started coming, CISA had a workforce of 3,300, presumably including both employees and contractors.
The second article, dated June 4 and titled “CISA workforce cut by nearly one-third so far”, stated that “The Trump administration’s campaign to purge the federal workforce has already driven roughly 1,000 employees out of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency..” It followed up by quoting a CISA employee as saying, “..we’ve lost about 1,000 people, down to around 2,200.” (my emphasis) Of course, this indicates the workforce was about 3,200 in January.
The third article was published in Cybersecurity Dive on September 29, two days before the current partial shutdown started. By that time, it was already clear that the shutdown would happen. It quotes DHS as saying, “CISA estimates 889 employees as the total number excepted and estimated to be retained during a lapse in appropriations.”
The article went on to say, “CISA is among the agencies that are allowed to retain a significant number of employees during a shutdown because it performs national security work.” This means that CISA could probably have retained more than 889 of its employees during a shutdown, but that it had decided those were all it needed.
This means that the 1,311 employees who were furloughed during the shutdown are probably on CISA’s list to eliminate by the end of the year, since if they’re not needed now, they obviously won’t be needed when the government reopens. Indeed, the Cybersecurity Dive article I quoted in yesterday’s post stated that 176 employees (presumably already on furlough for the shutdown) had been laid off since the shutdown began on October 1[i].
While something could always change, I think we should anticipate that, by the end of the year, CISA will have fewer than – say – 1,000 employees (and probably no contractors, since they’re always the first staff members laid off). Since there were 3,200 employees in January, this means the workforce will likely be reduced by 69% this year.
Of course, that’s a significant reduction. However, don’t worry; CISA’s management (there’s no Director, since the nominee hasn’t yet been confirmed) has assured us that the people being let go were doing work they never should have been doing in the first place. As yesterday’s article stated, “During the last administration, CISA was focused on censorship, branding and electioneering,” a spokesperson said. “This is part of getting CISA back on mission.”
This statement refers to CISA’s attempts, admittedly too heavy handed, to combat misinformation about the results of the 2020 Presidential election. However, it’s doubtful that any of the people being let go had anything to do with that effort; it’s certain they didn’t direct it. In fact, the article states,
…the layoffs targeted employees in CISA’s Stakeholder Engagement Division, which manages the agency’s relationships with state, local, international and critical infrastructure partners; the Integrated Operations Division, which delivers services to partner organizations and runs CISA’s around-the-clock watch center; and the Infrastructure Security Division’s Chemical Security unit, which helped protect chemical facilities.
Obviously, none of these divisions have anything to do with election security, but that didn’t stop them from being decimated anyway. As I pointed out in yesterday’s post, CISA is paying the price for the fact that its founder and first Director, Chris Krebs, told the truth about the 2020 election in 2020. He was immediately fired for doing that, but it seems that more than 2,000 current CISA employees are also going to lose their jobs almost five years later, because of Chris’s supposed sins.
As a result, by the end of 2025, CISA will be a pale shadow of what it was just a year ago. There’s nothing you or I can do about this, but none of us should expect great things – or even purely normal things you would have expected a year ago – from CISA going forward. That’s quite sad.
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[i] Literally as I was writing these words, a Nextgov alert stated that a judge had temporarily enjoined any layoffs “during or because of the shutdown”. Even if that holds up on appeal, it doesn’t mean the administration can’t make the cuts after the shutdown ends.