Thomas McWeeney

Dr. Thomas McWeeney is a political scientist, strategic planner, management consultant, and professor of government and public administration.  He currently serves as a member of the pubic administration faculty at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB), where he teaches a full load of undergraduate and graduate courses, including “Business and Government”, “Strategic Planning for Government”, “Intergovernmental Administration”, and “Public Management Information Systems”.   After receiving his Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University (with distinction) in 1982, Dr. McWeeney designed, developed, and led innovative projects that have successfully transformed federal agencies and greatly expanded the reach of university programs.  

Dr. McWeeney comes to CSUSB after a 30-year career in which he combined progressively high-level experience in the management of federal agencies and a continual affiliation with academia.  Between 1986 and 2014, Dr. McWeeney served as an adjunct professor of government and public administration at the University of Maryland, University College (UMUC), Central Michigan University (CMU), and George Mason University (GMU).  In these positions, he received widespread acclaim for developing and effectively teaching over 30 courses in political science, international relations, and public administration and played an instrumental role in developing new initiatives and courses that added great value and benefit to these universities and contributed to significant enrollment increases in a very short periods of time.

Dr. McWeeney served in the US government for over 30 years -- first as a senior management official and then as consultant to senior federal executives.  From 1974 to 1992, Dr. McWeeney worked in the US Department of Justice working with executive leadership to develop and implement many of the most well known programs of the era.   He held a number of senior-level positions in the US Department of Justice, including Planning Director and Budget Officer and he played a critical role was involved in the development and transformation of many high-impact programs, serving as a key actor in the development of the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, the Seized Assets Program, the State and Local Task Force Program, and the South American drug trafficking initiative.  He also led the first comprehensive strategy for the Drug Enforcement Administration and played a leadership role of the first joint DOJ/DOD interagency counter-drug strategy.

In 1992, Dr. McWeeney left the Federal government to establish the Center for Strategic Management (CSM) - a small business-consulting firm that has provided a wide array of consulting, training, and advisory services to federal executives that greatly contributed to the success of their agencies.  In 2009, he established the CSM-Public Leadership Institute (CSM-PLI), a non-profit organization that emphasizes the critical role of leadership in improving government performance.   In these positions, Dr. McWeeney has sought and received several hundred thousand dollars in Federal grants from the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Labor for leading innovative leadership projects.

As PLI’s Executive Director, Dr. McWeeney has sought and received several hundred thousand dollars in Federal grants from the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Labor for leading innovative leadership projects.  

Finally, in addition to carrying a full-time course load, Dr. McWeeney was named Associate Director of CSUSB’s Leonard Transportation Center (LTC) in January 2017.   In this position, he was instrumental in encouraging the US Secretary of Transportation to visit the CSUSB campus in October, 2017 – which in turn led to DOT designating CSUSB as on of 11 “transportation innovation centers” in the United States.  Current efforts are focused on developing a transportation strategic plan for the Region.

Leadership and Innovation

Dr. McWeeney has served as the principal consultant to key executives in several federal law enforcement agencies.  In these efforts, he has worked on behalf of agency senior executives and has led comprehensive projects that provided innovative thinking, new direction, and organizational transformation to high profile agencies facing challenges from a changing external environment and diminishing internal capacity.   Among the executives with whom he as worked closely are:

• The Deputy Director, Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, the Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, and the Assistant Director for Intelligence of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);
• The Director and Deputy Director, and Assistant Director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS);
• The National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX);
• United States Attorneys from the Western District of Washington, the Eastern District of Missouri, the Southern District of Illinois; the District of New Mexico, the Northern District of New York, and the Central District of California
• The Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA);
• The Director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC);
• The Director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Program in the Department of Justice;
• The Director of Court Services and Offender Supervision Administration.  
• The Sheriffs of Orange County, Los Angeles County, and San Diego County, California.  
• The President of Central Michigan University.

Dr. McWeeney’s close collaboration with these executives produced candid assessments of their organization’s strategic situation and their capabilities, a strong, compelling strategic direction that fundamentally changed the way they did business, a high-impact implementation plan that demonstrated the leadership commitment to the strategy, and the development of innovative pilot programs that brought new approaches, an enhanced level of performance, and long term impact to their organizations.   Significant examples include:

• Palestine Security Assistance.   In 2014, Dr. McWeeney led a US State Department funded initiative that sought to enhance the capability of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces. In this effort, Dr. McWeeney was asked to draw upon his experience in the United States to design and develop a “governance” process that would support the collaborative management of an information sharing system involving 13 autonomous regions.  Dr. McWeeney worked closely with US officials, the Palestinian Authority, as well as individuals from the various regions to establish the first joint governance charter of its kind in Palestinian history. The governance process is currently moving forward aggressively to create an integrated information sharing capability for the Palestinian security forces.
• Coal Mine Safety.  In 2013, Dr. McWeeney received a $250,000 grant from the US Department of Labor to develop an innovative approach to providing management accountability to mine safety in the aftermath a series of mine disasters.  Dr. McWeeney designed a “self-evaluation” approach for coal miners, developed the protocol for its use, and led an implementation team consisting of experts from both the public and private sector that initiated the project in five states.  The program identified significant vulnerabilities that had been repeatedly overlooked by the formal mine process.
• Region IX Leadership Project:  Dr. McWeeney designed and managed the start-up of an innovative information sharing project that sought to provide a fully integrated regional information sharing system to criminal justice agencies in the four states that comprise FEMA Region IX. The project was funded through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance of the US Department of Justice.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI):  Dr. McWeeney developed the first Bureau-wide strategic plan for the FBI, as well as its first counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and intelligence program strategies.   These efforts provided a new perspective and innovative initiatives to each of the FBI’s national security and criminal justice programs that redefined key aspects of these programs and led to significant performance improvements. (1994-2010)
• Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS): Dr. McWeeney developed the first strategic plan for NCIS and was subsequently asked to lead an agency-wide modernization project in the aftermath of 9/11.  Dr. McWeeney facilitated a three-year project that transformed all aspects of NCIS – its mission, operational priorities, intelligence programs, and its organization, its operational programs, its management, and its relationship with the criminal justice community throughout the nation. (2001-2010)
• Law Enforcement Information Exchange (LInX).  Dr. McWeeney designed, developed, and led the first integrated law enforcement information sharing initiative that combined the investigative records from all federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in a region into a single database, accessible by all participants, which produced a composite record that reflected the records of the participating agencies.  Moreover, he led the expansion of this landmark program to nine US Law Enforcement Communities and served as the principal advisor to throughout the implementation process. (2004-12).
• United States Attorney, Western District of Washington.   Dr. McWeeney developed an innovative crime strategy on behalf of the US Attorney that reflected the collaboration of the various criminal justice agencies in the District.  The strategy identified emerging crime that was previously unknown, created District-wide priorities that had never been attempted, and introduced new collaborative programs, including the LInX information sharing system.  The project resulted in a significant performance improvement by the law enforcement community (2004-2005).

Education and Training

• In 2010, Dr. McWeeney joined the University of Maryland University College graduate school to assist in the development and implementation of a new program focusing on management issues common to the US Intelligence Community.   Dr. McWeeney assisted in the development of the core course for the program and was asked to develop and teach the program’s capstone project – Leadership in the Intelligence Community. In these efforts, he has introduced innovative approaches to the program that include an extensive use of instructional videos and collaboration tools.  In 2012, he was awarded a UMUC Faculty Research Grant to determine if the collaboration model he developed in his information sharing projects had applicability to the IC. In 2013, he was again awarded a Faculty Research Grant for his work in expanding the curriculum of UMUC Intelligence Program to the private sector. He is currently teaching a new course at California State University at San Bernardino – Business and Government - that focuses on the need for collaborative solutions to public policy concerns
• In 1994, Dr. McWeeney was named Director of Central Michigan University’s extended learning programs in Washington DC.  In this effort, he sought to adapt CMU’s traditional public administration curriculum to the new “reinventing government” initiative, to provide training to the federal workforce. Dr. McWeeney conducted over 125 performance-related training seminars and conferences, attended by more than 4,500 federal employees from over 75 different agencies.  These training courses, which proved to be a significant marketing initiative for CMU, were also provided to the U.S. House of Representatives and dozens of federal agencies and private organizations that requested on-site training.
• In addition, Dr. McWeeney marketed, designed, and conducted on-site corporate graduate programs that were provided for the National Security Agency, the General Services Administration, and Motorola, Inc.  The programs were focused on providing graduate education to emerging leaders in those organizations.

Related Activities Dr. McWeeney has authored and coauthored articles on performance management, health care reform, public information, and information sharing as well as numerous special studies and reports that have had a significant impact on government operations.  His work provided the foundation for the widely acclaimed book, “The Business of Government.”