Immigration Service

In response to a congressional request, GAO examined the methodologies and practices that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) used to select technologies for the enforcement of immigration law.

GAO found that INS: (1) lacked systematic procedures for selecting new technologies; (2) lacked policies regarding the procedures for the identification of needs or problems, as well as the identification of solutions; (3) lacked policies regarding the types of items that it should test or the scope and methods for the testing process; (4) lacked policies regarding the use of the research and development office or the interaction between it and program offices and users; (5) did not consistently select or adequately review or test technology; (6) did not have a current or complete inventory of items used in the field; (7) improperly allowed its regional and field offices to determine how they distributed resources and spent funds; (8) did not gather or maintain information on the effectiveness of items used or have a clearinghouse to provide the information to prospective purchasers or users; (9) lacked long-term planning for and control over expenditures for electronic and communication equipment; (10) did not sufficiently plan its technology acquisitions to eliminate additional purchases and show potential savings; and (11) experienced difficulties in applying the GAO-developed framework to specific cases, due to differences in the current INS process.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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