New OIG Report Assesses USCIS’s Progress
A new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Inspector General report concludes that USCIS “remains entrenched in a cycle of continual planning, with limited progress toward achieving its long-term transformation goals.” Overcoming hindrances to moving from planning to implementation “is critical to addressing longstanding USCIS process and systems issues and realizing a more effective benefits processing environment.”
Specifically, the report states, obtaining the funding needed to support implementation of USCIS’s business transformation program is a continual concern. Establishing a clearly defined strategy, including funding plans, goals, and performance measures, is fundamental, the Inspector General said. Linking information technology (IT) objectives to this transformation strategy and ensuring sufficient internal and external stakeholder involvement in IT and process improvement initiatives also will be key. Until USCIS addresses these issues, the Inspector General noted, the agency will not be in a position to either manage existing workloads effectively or handle the potentially dramatic increase in immigration benefits processing workloads that could result from proposed immigration reform legislation.
The report, “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Progress in Modernizing Information Technology,” is available at www.dhs.gov.
