INS info systems criticized

Despite an influx of money in recent years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has failed to make significant progress in improving its management of immigration applications, according to a report from the General Accounting Office.

One of the top reasons cited for INS' problems is the lack of adequate information systems.

"Although INS has experienced substantial growth in its budget and staff, it continues to have difficulty managing its application workload," GAO officials wrote in the report, titled "Immigration Benefits: Several Factors Impede Timeliness of Application Processing." INS' adjudication and naturalization budget, which is composed largely of fees paid by applicants, has nearly quadrupled to nearly $500 million since fiscal 1994. "INS acknowledges, and we agree, that it needs better automation capability and a more streamlined application process to provide improved levels of service," according to the report.

Because of automation problems, INS managers cannot readily determine the size and status of their pending workload, the application processing times, the existence of processing bottlenecks, how to deploy staff based on workload and backlogs, or whether applications are processed in the order in which they are received.

Without such data, it is nearly impossible to accurately assess problems in the application process, GAO officials said.

INS district offices, which will handle about 45 percent of all fiscal 2000 applications, process most applications manually because they do not have an automated case management and tracking system for processing most types of applications, the report stated.

INS has been long criticized for delays in the immigration process and for the service's inability to provide immigrants with timely decisions on their applications for such benefits as naturalization and legal permanent residence.

INS has taken efforts to improve the reliability of its existing automated systems, according to GAO, and it is preparing a business plan and an information technology strategy to guide its process re-engineering and IT improvement efforts.

"We believe these efforts are steps in the right direction. Many of them, however, are still in the planning stages, so it is too early to tell whether and to what extent they will resolve INS' application workload problems," GAO officials said.

In a one-page letter to GAO, Michael Pearson, INS' executive associate commissioner for field operations, said that INS officials agree with the report.