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Adm. Thad Allen became the Coast Guard’s 23rd commandant May 25. Less than two hours after taking command, he issued “Commandant’s SITREP 1,” an all-hands message containing his strategic vision for the Coast Guard. Navy Times sat down with Allen on May 30 to discuss his strategies and goals for the next four years.

Q. You issued an all-hands memo immediately after taking command. Is that your communications style?

A. I would hope the way we communicated after the change of command is emblematic of how we are going to continue. There are a couple of models I live by in my life; one is that transparency of information breeds self-correcting behavior. If everyone understands the goals of the organization and you make information available to them, it becomes empowering. It breeds a common sense of purpose.

Q. Who are your leadership role models, to include past commandants?

A. I go back to Alexander Hamilton. Anyone who hasn’t read Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton is really missing something regarding somebody who is arguably the greatest American who was never elected president. I draw a lot on his intellectual capacity. He wasn’t perfect, as we know, but he was the father of public administration in this country and somebody to be studied. I’ve worked directly for the last four or five commandants … so to the extent that we are a summation of the people we know and the experiences we have, I think they were all somewhat contributory to my success.

Q. How have your experiences in Hurricane Katrina influenced the leader you are today?

A. While we are trying to be as open as we can in government, there still are stovepipes — and there was some stovepiping by functions of the various federal agencies involved in Katrina. Leading across a stovepipe organization was a pretty significant challenge and one I spent a lot of time on. But I also benefited from the experience. Really, the overwhelming issue was dealing with an unprecedented event where the book doesn’t necessarily apply. Even a perfect national response plan may not have been adequate for that task.

Q. Were there lessons learned for the Coast Guard from Katrina?

A. Sure. As well as our search-and-rescue response went, we were still responding to calls in an ad hoc fashion as they came in. We were extraordinarily effective at doing that. But when Rita came ashore a month later, we were able to lay out grid searches and do a comprehensive sweep of the entire area, which made sure that people who didn’t have a phone and couldn’t report could be located.

Q. What organizational changes can we expect in the next four years?

A. What the Coast Guard has been doing subconsciously for the past decade, since the end of the Cold War, has been changing its force structure. But I don’t think we’ve stepped back and taken a look at all the structures and how they interact. We have three basic force structures in the Coast Guard — I tend to think of them as a trident. One is fixed-base operations, those that guard the coast. We are consolidating those into sectors and that’s set. Deepwater has locked down the force structure for our long-range mobile assets. Then, what’s left are the variety of forces that we move around based on programmatic needs — units like the port security units, the maritime safety and security teams, the oil and hazmat teams, and the deployable airborne use of force squadrons. Our goal is to take those forces and place them under one command — not move them physically, but put a command-and-control structure over the top. That way, we’ll end up with shore-based forces, the maritime patrol forces and the deployable forces.

Q. In your first speech as commandant, you spoke of “operationalizing” the “national fleet” concept that establishes Navy-Coast Guard relations. What do you mean?

A. It’s all about thinking of the Coast Guard and the Navy together operating in the maritime environment and where you can create similarities in the equipment you are buying, the doctrine you are using, or how you are deploying your forces. You can be more effective because you are working together, and you are broadening the force out so it is much larger than the Navy or Coast Guard by itself. We don’t want to be the world’s second-best navy. We’re the world’s best coast guard, and they are the world’s best navy. Together, we are the world’s best maritime force.

Q. Can you give us examples of where you would work best together?

A. Global maritime intelligent integration, maritime domain awareness, and with these deployable forces put under a single command structure, there’s the opportunity to link up with Navy riverine forces — the chance, from a national fleet standpoint, to see what the combination of these force structures can do for the Navy.

Q. Are you planning on making any changes to the Deepwater schedule?

A. We did a really in-depth review following Sept. 11, and we have agreed on a baseline. I don’t intend to revisit that for a couple of reasons. First, we got it right with the new baseline. And at this point, we need to be cutting steel and getting hulls in the water and putting these tools in the hands of our people.

Q. Are there any personnel initiatives you are looking at right away?

A. In the past couple of years, we have made a lot of changes and we’ve made progress in shaping the work force to match mission requirements. That said, the landscape is constantly changing, and we have to constantly reassess. One of the things we are going to do is issue a Coast Guard maritime strategy in the next 90 to 120 days — a capstone document that supports the national strategy for maritime security. What I’ve challenged Coast Guard leaders to do is get me resource plans, logistics plans, command-and-control plans and mission support plans that allow us to most effectively support the strategy issued by the president.

Also, we are looking at certain capabilities and competencies and deciding how to capitalize on them. Specifically, we will be looking at law enforcement competencies and how we manage those. We’ve had conversations about language qualifications and how we manage them, and there’s discussion on whether we need an intelligence rating.

Q. What about officers?

A. We have regarded ourselves as generalists, but a term that is emerging right now is “subject-matter expert.” We need certain experts because of the world we live in. Probably what you’ll see us moving toward are subject-matter experts who have had broader careers but also have an expertise. If you look at the information technology world, the intelligence world, the acquisition world, you need to be really good at those things nowadays.

Q. Any changes in terms of uniforms, physical training, etc.?

A. The operational dress uniform is a very good work uniform for us and our people like it. There are some things about it we need to tweak, and I’m going to ask Master Chief [of the Coast Guard Skip] Bowen to work with the uniform board to look into them. There are discussions right now as to whether you wear the blouse in or out, and we’re going to look into that. I’ll also probably broaden the environment for the uniform to be worn. It originally was worn in a working environment. But if you look, you see our DoD counterparts around town wearing their BDUs [battle dress uniforms] in environments other than the field. I think the ODU gives us a certain visibility of our work force and makes us remember we are an operational service.