A recent report on the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) paints a disturbing picture of the how the organization charged with overseeing lawful immigration in this country operates. We feel it provides some useful insight for our readers and clients in Columbus, Ohio and Troy, Michigan.
In a report dated November 22, auditors from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that a $1.7 billion project to modernize operations at USCIS has been plagued by unreliability related to cost and planning.
In late 2008 USCIS awarded a technology and services project to IBM that was supposed to "move the agency to a new centralized and consolidated electronic environment that will enable faster, more efficient and accurate immigration benefits determination and processing." The contract was initially given $491.1 million in options for five years.
Since that time cost estimates grew from $410.7 million through FY2013 to more than $700 million through FY2011 alone. Updated estimates have the cost at the current $1.7 billion figure through FY2022. Though USCIS is expecting to unveil the first computerized form before the end of this calendar year, the GAO report said USCIS still doesn't have a handle on when the project will be completed.
It also doesn't appear that USCIS has mechanisms in place to stop costs from escalating. Some are blaming this on the contract being performance based, meaning USCIS outlined the results it wanted and let the IBM decide how best to get to that point.
The result, according to the GAO, is that the USCIS "does not have reasonable assurance that it can meet its future milestones." The GAO recommended that USCIS develop and stick to a master schedule.
It appears to us that the USCIS might be suffering from the same lack of tech experience as the rest of the country. The type of skills they are looking for IBM to provide are scarce. Their difficulty seems to confirm that we would all be better off if more H-1B workers were allowed to obtain visas.
