DHS Immigration Attorneys: Workload Analysis and Workforce	 
Planning Efforts Lack Data and Documentation (17-APR-07,	 
GAO-07-206).							 
                                                                 
The legal staff of key Department of Homeland Security (DHS)	 
components--Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S.	 
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Customs and	 
Border Protection (CBP)--perform important immigration		 
enforcement, inspection, and service functions. This report	 
addresses the actions ICE, USCIS, and CBP legal offices are	 
taking to identify attorney needs, determine where those	 
attorneys should be deployed, and address staffing shortfalls. To
conduct its work, GAO interviewed component senior legal office  
officials in headquarters and regional offices and reviewed	 
available documentation on staffing.				 
-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-07-206 					        
    ACCNO:   A68305						        
  TITLE:     DHS Immigration Attorneys: Workload Analysis and	      
Workforce Planning Efforts Lack Data and Documentation		 
     DATE:   04/17/2007 
  SUBJECT:   Data collection					 
	     Documentation					 
	     Employees						 
	     Human capital					 
	     Human capital management				 
	     Human capital planning				 
	     Internal controls					 
	     Staff utilization					 
	     Strategic planning 				 
	     Policies and procedures				 
	     Program implementation				 

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GAO-07-206

   

     * [1]Results in Brief
     * [2]Background

          * [3]Transition of Legacy Agencies into DHS and Legacy Attorney S
          * [4]Organization and Funding for Components' Legal Resources wit
          * [5]Guidance on Strategic Workforce Planning

     * [6]DHS Components Are Taking Steps to Improve Workforce Plannin

          * [7]ICE Lacks Data Needed to Reliably Determine Its Overall Atto

               * [8]ICE Reports Taking Action to Collect Data to Improve
                 Workfor
               * [9]ICE Lacks Documentation for Validating Its Attorney
                 Workforc

          * [10]USCIS Acknowledges It Lacks Data Needed to Determine Attorne

               * [11]USCIS's Legal Office Coordinates with Other USCIS
                 Offices to

          * [12]CBP Reports Implementing a Successful Attorney Workforce Sta

               * [13]CBP Reports that Staffing Shortfalls Have Been Avoided
               * [14]CBP Does Not Have Written Policies and Procedures for
                 Its At

     * [15]Conclusions
     * [16]Recommendations for Executive Action
     * [17]Agency Comments and Our Evaluation
     * [18]GAO Contact:
     * [19]Acknowledgments:
     * [20]GAO's Mission
     * [21]Obtaining Copies of GAO Reports and Testimony

          * [22]Order by Mail or Phone

     * [23]To Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Federal Programs
     * [24]Congressional Relations
     * [25]Public Affairs

Report to the Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., House of
Representatives

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO

April 2007

DHS IMMIGRATION ATTORNEYS

Workload Analysis and Workforce Planning Efforts Lack Data and
Documentation

GAO-07-206

Contents

Letter 1

Results in Brief 4
Background 8
DHS Components Are Taking Steps to Improve Workforce Planning for the
Attorney Staffing Process, but Need Better Data Related to Work Activities
14
Conclusions 28
Recommendations for Executive Action 30
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 31
Appendix I USCIS Program Office Positions Converted to Attorney Positions
36
Appendix II Comments from the Department of Homeland Security 37
Appendix III GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 42

Tables

Table 1: ICE's Planned Enhancements to GEMS That It Reports Will Provide
Additional Data to Assist in Its Workforce Planning Efforts 19
Table 2: USCIS Program Office Positions Converted to Attorney Positions
for Fiscal Years 2004-2006 by Program Office 36

Figures

Figure 1: Transfer of Immigration Functions from Former INS into DHS 8
Figure 2: Number of Attorney Positions Funded at ICE, USCIS, and CBP for
the Fiscal Years Ending September 30, 2004, 2005, and 2006 10
Figure 3: Funding Provided to ICE, USCIS, and CBP for Attorneys' Salaries
and Expenses for Fiscal Years 2004-2006 12

Abbreviations

CBP Customs and Border Protection
CCTS Chief Counsel Tracking System
DHS Department of Homeland Security
EOIR Executive Office for Immigration Review
GEMS General Counsel Electronic Management System
ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement
INS Immigration and Naturalization Service
OCC Office of Chief Counsel
OPM Office of Personnel Management
USCIS U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

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separately.

United States Government Accountability Office
Washington, DC 20548

April 17, 2007

The Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr.
House of Representatives

Dear Mr. Sensenbrenner:

The federal government's immigration enforcement responsibilities
encompass many legal functions, including those related to the removal of
aliens illegally present in the United States and the investigation of
those who engage in fraud. Immigration legal functions also pertain to
determining the admissibility of aliens during inspections at ports of
entry, and providing legal review and advice related to the adjudication
of millions of immigration benefit applications and petitions (including
naturalization and permanent resident applications) filed each year.

Attorneys within three of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS)
components play important roles in carrying out immigration functions.
Although each component's legal office reports to the DHS General Counsel,
their attorneys provide legal advice and services to the components in
which they are located. These components--U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)--and their attorney roles on
immigration matters are as follows:

           o ICE is responsible for, among other things, enforcement of
           immigration law. Attorneys within ICE's Office of the Principal
           Legal Advisor prepare legal opinions on immigration cases,
           prosecute cases in immigration court, and provide legal advice and
           support to other personnel in DHS and the Department of Justice.^1
           In this role, the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor supports
           the three components' work to remove aliens illegally present in
           the United States, enforce immigration law in the workplace, and
           prosecute alien smugglers and human traffickers.
           o USCIS is primarily responsible for processing applications for
           immigration benefits such as applications for nonimmigrant visas,
           permanent residence, U.S. citizenship, and asylum.^2 USCIS
           attorneys, through its Office of Chief Counsel, provide legal
           support to the agency's program offices. This legal support
           includes, among other responsibilities, providing legal advice on
           immigration and administrative issues,^3 providing litigation
           support to the Department of Justice--in its role as lead
           counsel--in defending lawsuits brought against USCIS in federal
           court, and representing USCIS in visa petition proceedings before
           the Department of Justice's Board of Immigration Appeals.^4

           o CBP employs attorneys who, through CBP's Office of Chief
           Counsel, provide legal support, training, and guidance to CBP
           personnel, review proposed legislation, support the Department of
           Justice in civil or criminal judicial actions involving CBP, and
           represent CBP in administrative matters.^5

^1ICE attorneys also provide advice on administrative issues and appear in
administrative hearings before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission and the Merit Systems Protection Board. They also respond to
attorney grievances. In addition, selected ICE attorneys serve as Special
Assistant United States Attorneys in both criminal and civil matters.

Immigration-related court litigation has steadily increased over the last
several years. For example, between fiscal years 2000 and 2005, the number
of civil cases prosecuted by ICE attorneys in immigration courts increased
almost 39 percent, from about 381,000 to 531,000 cases.^6 Moreover,
according to statistics maintained by the Department of Justice's
Executive Office for Immigration Review, between fiscal years 2001 and
2005, the number of visa petition appeals filed escalated almost 250
percent, from 1,129 to 3,950, increasing USCIS attorneys' work in
representing the agency before the Department of Justice's Board of
Immigration Appeals. Although CBP attorneys do not play as prominent a
role in supporting immigration litigation as do ICE and USCIS attorneys,
its Office of Chief Counsel's workload statistics reflected a 15 percent
increase in its aggregate workload between fiscal years 2004 and 2005.

^2A nonimmigrant is a person, not a citizen or national of the United
States, seeking to enter the United States temporarily for a specific
reason, such as business or pleasure.

^3USCIS attorneys represent USCIS in administrative hearings before the
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Merit Systems Protection
Board, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and labor arbitrators.

^4The Department of Justice's Board of Immigration Appeals primarily
conducts appellate reviews of immigration judge decisions but also hears
appeals of certain decisions made by DHS district directors or other
immigration officials.

^5CBP attorneys represent CBP in administrative hearings before the U.S.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Merit Systems Protection
Board, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and labor arbitrators.

^6GAO, Executive Office for Immigration Review: Caseload Performance
Reporting Needs Improvement, [26]GAO-06-771 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 11,
2006).

In your former capacity as Chairman of the House Committee on the
Judiciary, you requested that we conduct a study of these components'
attorney workforce planning processes. You also expressed concerns about
DHS's human capital management with respect to whether staffing levels for
attorneys responsible for providing legal services in support of
immigration activities within DHS have kept pace with increasing
caseloads.

In this report, we discuss what actions ICE, USCIS, and CBP legal
components have taken or plan to take to identify attorney needs,
determine where those attorneys should be deployed, and address staffing
shortfalls.^7 Our report addresses ICE, USCIS, and CBP actions related to
workforce planning for attorney staffing from the formal allocation of
attorneys among these three DHS components (May 6, 2004) through the end
of the most recent fiscal year (September 30, 2006).

To determine what actions ICE, USCIS, and CBP have taken or plan to take
to identify their attorney needs, determine where to deploy those
attorneys, and to address staffing shortfalls, we principally relied on
interviews with knowledgeable officials from their legal offices. For ICE,
we met with the Principal Legal Advisor and representatives from his
headquarters and Arlington offices. For USCIS, we met with the Office of
Chief Counsel's Deputy Chief Counsel, Chief of Staff, and other
headquarters staff as well as the Regional and Deputy Regional Counsel for
the eastern region. We also met with an official from USCIS's eastern
regional program (operational) office. For CBP, we met with the Chief
Counsel, the Deputy Chief Counsel, and representatives from the Houston
office. We met with representatives from ICE's Arlington legal office,
USCIS's eastern region legal office, and CBP's Houston legal office
because these officials were knowledgeable about the field office role in
their agency's attorney workforce staffing process. In addition, we
examined available documentation from the DHS components we reviewed,
including staffing requests prepared for budget justifications, statistics
on ICE's and CBP's workload, and 2004 organizational assessments of ICE's
and USCIS's legal offices. We also obtained and analyzed information on
alien detention costs DHS incurred during fiscal year 2006 to assess the
impact on DHS that ICE's legal office told us occurs when ICE attorneys
request delays in hearings. We determined that information related to
ICE's workload, specifically, the number of national security cases ICE
attorneys handled prior to and after September 11, 2001, and alien
detention costs were sufficiently reliable for purposes of this report.^8
We based this decision on an assessment of the policies and procedures ICE
uses for collecting and maintaining this information. We also compared the
components' workforce planning processes to core workforce planning
principles outlined in our past work on strategic human capital management
and the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) guidance on human
capital.^9

7A shortfall is the difference between the number of attorneys an agency
is authorized and the number the agency determines it needs.

We conducted our work from July 2006 through March 2007 in accordance with
generally accepted government auditing standards.

Results in Brief

Our prior work on strategic workforce planning states that staffing
decisions, including needs assessments and deployment decisions, should be
based on valid and reliable data;^10 however, ICE and USCIS's legal
offices do not currently have such data available, though efforts are
under way to address this challenge. Our prior work has also identified
that written policies and procedures--including clearly defined,
well-documented, transparent, and consistently applied criteria--are
necessary to developing human capital approaches that enable the sustained
contributions of skilled staff. Moreover, our standards for internal
controls in the federal government state that clear documentation should
be readily available for examination. Although ICE, USCIS, and CBP's legal
offices reported having procedures in place that are intended to determine
the number of attorneys needed, to deploy attorneys where they are needed
most, and to address attorney staffing shortfalls, none of these three
legal offices have fully documented their processes, procedures, and the
data they use in these workforce planning decisions. Without documented
plans and procedures, it will be difficult for the legal offices to review
and validate their staffing decisions or for others to independently
assess the legal offices' workforce planning efforts. This is particularly
important to help ensure that sufficient legal resources are available to
meet organizational goals related to immigration enforcement, inspection,
and service functions--particularly in light of rising legal workloads in
all three offices. Furthermore, without documentation, the legal offices
may not have and be able to provide reasonable assurance that they are
consistently applying their staffing process, implementing their workforce
planning efforts as intended, or sustaining their efforts over time. An
analysis of each legal office's approach to workforce planning, and
efforts under way to address challenges, follows:

^8We did not conduct a data reliability assessment of workload data for
CBP because documentation was not available to validate its workforce
planning process. In addition, we did not conduct a data reliability
assessment of workload data for USCIS because USCIS has not yet fully
implemented a system to generate comprehensive workload data.

^9GAO, Human Capital: Key Principles for Effective Strategic Workforce
Planning, [27]GAO-04-39 (Washington, D.C.: December 2003); GAO, A Model of
Strategic Human Capital Management, [28]GAO-02-373SP (Washington, D.C.:
March 2002); GAO, Human Capital: A Self-Assessment Checklist for Agency
Leaders, [29]GAO/OCG-00-14G (Washington, D.C.: September 2000); and OPM,
Strategic Human Resources Management: Aligning with the Mission,
(Washington, D.C.: September 1999).

^10See [30]GAO-02-373SP , p. 23.

           o Officials from ICE's legal office acknowledged that while an
           approach is in place for identifying attorney staffing needs, more
           data are needed to improve their attorney staffing decisions.
           ICE's legal office has relied primarily on its professional
           judgment to establish a staffing ratio between attorneys and
           immigration judges. This ratio, historically based on two
           attorneys for each immigration court judge, reflects the legal
           office's judgment of how the office's workloads translate into an
           appropriate number of attorneys needed, and where they should be
           deployed. The staffing ratio approach may not always ensure that
           attorney resources are allocated where they are most needed
           because it does not take into account the length of time needed to
           complete each case. To help determine its staffing needs, the
           legal office supplements this approach with a workload tracking
           system that measures, for instance, the number of hearings
           attended. However, the system does not track other information
           such as the time it takes attorneys to conduct their work
           activities. Thus, ICE's legal office lacks comprehensive data that
           it can rely on for making staffing decisions. Officials from ICE's
           legal office also reported that the office faces staffing
           shortfalls as caseloads rise, resulting in delayed court
           proceedings, increased detention costs, and other effects.
           Officials from the legal office stated that they are working to
           incorporate additional data into the office's existing workload
           tracking system by December 2007, to better manage the attorney
           staffing process. Although ICE's legal office reports having ways
           to measure its progress in making enhancements to its workload
           tracking system and in reporting the results of its progress, the
           office has not yet documented its performance measures or
           mechanisms for reporting on the status of its efforts. Without
           such documentation, ICE's legal office may not be in a position to
           effectively monitor its progress in meeting its goals related to
           this effort or provide reasonable assurance that its enhancements
           are being implemented as intended.

           o USCIS legal officials stated that its attorney workforce
           planning approach is based on estimates of workload data, such as
           the number of legal actions filed against USCIS. These officials
           acknowledged that it is not possible to reliably determine USCIS
           attorney needs or anticipate shortfalls based on these estimates,
           since other workload activities, such as the provision of legal
           advice to USCIS's program offices, are not included. As a
           consequence, lacking sufficiently reliable data, these officials
           stated that DHS has not been in a position to request additional
           attorneys for USCIS. Instead, to address some staffing needs,
           USCIS officials said that they have coordinated with other USCIS
           offices to acquire additional legal resources. For example, the
           legal office officials told us that they meet at least quarterly
           with USCIS program office officials to discuss converting vacant
           positions within the program office into attorney positions, to
           help offset shortfalls. Although this approach has resulted in the
           acquisition of new attorney positions, USCIS legal officials told
           us they remain understaffed. Efforts to implement a more
           comprehensive workload data management system to improve the
           staffing process are to be completed by the end of fiscal year
           2007, officials stated, but USCIS's legal office has not yet
           documented its plans for implementing this system. Without such
           documentation, the legal office may not have reasonable assurance
           that its personnel are implementing the system as intended.

           o Officials in CBP's legal office reported that the office has
           developed and implemented a successful approach for determining
           how many attorneys the legal office needs to conduct its work,
           where to geographically locate these attorneys, and to anticipate
           and address shortfalls before they occur. They said that this
           approach involves analyzing workload statistics, soliciting
           feedback from CBP program offices on their legal service needs,
           and estimating the time attorneys need to complete their work.
           Using this method, the Chief Counsel said that the legal office
           has not experienced staffing shortfalls and has met rising
           workloads by obtaining funding from the CBP Commissioner to hire
           additional attorneys.

In this report, we make recommendations to the Secretary of Homeland
Security to document (1) ICE's plan for measuring its progress in making
enhancements to its workload tracking system and for reporting on the
results of its efforts; (2) USCIS's plans for implementing a data
management system to help ensure that the system is implemented as
intended; and (3) attorney workforce planning processes for each
component's legal offices to assist these offices in better managing their
staffing process for effectively achieving the legal offices' goals.

We provided a draft of this report to DHS for review and comment. In
commenting on this report, DHS generally agreed with four of our five
recommendations. However, CBP's legal office disagreed with our
recommendation that it needs to develop documentation that clearly
describes its criteria, methodology, analysis, data, and the personnel
responsible for conducting workforce planning efforts. CBP's legal office
commented that while workforce planning principles included in our
exposure draft, A Model of Strategic Human Capital Management, may be
useful to managing large-scale federal operations, it believes the
principles are inapplicable to small offices such as CBP's legal office,
which has nearly 200 attorneys.^11 We disagree. We believe that the core
planning principles discussed in this report are appropriate for all
workforce planning efforts, including those conducted by CBP's legal
office. Furthermore, as previously stated, our standards for internal
control in the federal government require that significant events be
clearly documented and that the documentation be readily available for
examination by an independent entity. A copy of DHS's letter commenting on
the report is presented in appendix II.

^11See [31]GAO-02-373SP .

Background

Transition of Legacy Agencies into DHS and Legacy Attorney Staffing Allocations

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 created DHS, bringing together 22
agencies and programs responsible for key aspects of homeland security
including immigration enforcement and service-related functions.^12 A
legacy agency--the former Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS)--was among the 22 agencies brought together within DHS.^13 As a
result of this merger, responsibility for immigration enforcement,
inspection, and service-related functions was transferred to three
components within DHS--ICE, USCIS, and CBP. Figure 1 shows the transfer of
former INS immigration enforcement and service-related functions into DHS.

Figure 1: Transfer of Immigration Functions from Former INS into DHS

Before DHS became operational, on March 1, 2003, managers of the former
INS's Office of the General Counsel identified the proportion of its 710
attorneys to allocate among the legal offices within ICE, USCIS, and CBP,
according to DHS officials. DHS officials also told us that the former
INS's Office of the General Counsel made these decisions based upon its
judgment of the anticipated need each component would have for providing
immigration legal services and available attorney work hours. As such,
INS's managers determined that ICE should receive an allocation of 600
attorney positions for its Office of Principal Legal Advisor, USCIS should
receive 62 attorney positions for its Office of Chief Counsel, and CBP
should receive 48 attorney positions for its Office of Chief Counsel. On
May 6, 2004, the DHS General Counsel issued a memorandum formalizing INS's
decisions.^14 CBP's Chief Counsel also told us that when DHS became
operational, his office (formerly the Office of Chief Counsel in the
legacy U.S. Customs Service) had 123 attorney positions. With the
allocation of 48 positions from the former INS General Counsel's office,
CBP's legal office had a total of 171 attorney positions. Since May 6,
2004, then, the three legal offices have obtained additional resources
through other action, such as the annual budget process. Figure 2 shows
the number of attorney positions that were funded at ICE, USCIS, and CBP's
legal offices for the fiscal years ending September 30, 2004, to September
30, 2006.

^12Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135. Two
other legacy agencies, the former U.S. Customs Service (USCS) and the
Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service,
were also merged into DHS, and responsibility for their customs
investigations and enforcement and inspection functions were transferred
to ICE and CBP. However, these functions do not relate to immigration.

13Prior to the merger, INS was part of the Department of Justice.

14The Office of General Counsel is responsible for directing the
activities of DHS's legal offices. However, DHS officials told us that its
Office of General Counsel does not play a role in determining the
component's attorney resource needs as part of the budget process.

Figure 2: Number of Attorney Positions Funded at ICE, USCIS, and CBP for
the Fiscal Years Ending September 30, 2004, 2005, and 2006

Organization and Funding for Components' Legal Resources within DHS

ICE's legal office is led by a Principal Legal Advisor who is assisted by
a Deputy. The legal office is organized into 12 divisions. Eleven of these
divisions, such as Commercial and Administrative Law, Enforcement Law, and
National Security Law, are located in the headquarters office in
Washington, D.C. Officials from the legal office told us that as of
September 30, 2006, 119 of the office's 698 attorneys are located in
headquarters. They also said that as of September 30, 2006, the largest
division, Field Operations, has 579 attorneys located in 51 field offices
throughout the United States. This division is headed by a Director with
assistance from 26 Chief Counsels.

USCIS's legal office is led by a Chief Counsel who is assisted by a Deputy
Chief Counsel. As of September 30, 2006, the office's 92 attorneys are
located in USCIS's headquarters offices in Washington, D.C., and its three
regional offices throughout the United States in proximity to USCIS's
program offices. Each regional office is managed by a Regional Counsel.
Officials in the legal office said that 38 USCIS attorneys are located in
its headquarters offices, 21 attorneys are located in the Eastern Region,
16 in the Central Region, and 17 in the Western Region.

CBP's legal office is led by a Chief Counsel with support from a Deputy
Chief Counsel. At the end of fiscal year 2006, CBP's 192 attorneys were
located in offices throughout the United States in close proximity to
CBP's program offices. For example, the legal office's officials reported
that approximately 40 attorneys were located in headquarters offices in
Washington, D.C., at the end of fiscal year 2006, with the remainder
located in 27 field offices. The field offices are managed by Associate
and Assistant Chief Counsels.

Figure 3 illustrates funds provided to ICE, USCIS, and CBP legal offices
for their attorneys' salaries and expenses for each of the fiscal years
2004-2006.

Figure 3: Funding Provided to ICE, USCIS, and CBP for Attorneys' Salaries
and Expenses for Fiscal Years 2004-2006

Guidance on Strategic Workforce Planning

Strategic workforce planning helps ensure that an organization has the
staff with the necessary skills and competencies to accomplish its
strategic goals. Since 2001, we have reported strategic human capital
management as an area with a high risk of vulnerability to fraud, waste,
abuse, and mismanagement. In January 2007, we reported that significant
opportunities remain to improve strategic human capital management in the
federal government to respond to current and emerging 21st century
challenges.^15 For example, we reported that DHS's human capital systems
require continued attention to help prevent waste and ensure that DHS can
allocate its resources efficiently and effectively.

15GAO, High-Risk Series: An Update, [32]GAO-07-310 (Washington, D.C.:
January 2007), pp. 6, 39, and 45.

We have also issued various policy statements and guidance reinforcing the
importance of sound human capital management and workforce planning. Our
human capital guidance states that the success of the workforce planning
process that an agency uses can be judged by its results--how well it
helps the agency attain its mission and strategic goals--not by the type
of process used.^16 The guidance also highlights eight critical success
factors in strategic human capital management, including making
data-driven human capital decisions and targeted investments in people.^17
To make data-driven human capital decisions, the guidance states that
staffing decisions, including needs assessments and deployment decisions,
should be based on valid and reliable data. Furthermore, the guidance
states that to make targeted investments in people, organizations should
clearly document the methodology underlying their human capital
approaches. We have identified these factors, among others, as critical to
managing human capital approaches that facilitate sustained workforce
contributions.

Additional guidance we issued on strategic workforce planning outlines key
principles for effective workforce planning. These principles include (1)
involving management, employees, and other stakeholders in the workforce
planning process; (2) determining critical skills and competencies needed
to achieve results; (3) developing workforce strategies to address
shortfalls and the deployment of staff; (4) building the capabilities
needed to address administrative and other requirements important in
supporting workforce strategies; and (5) evaluating and revising these
workforce strategies.^18

OPM has also issued strategic workforce planning guidance to help agencies
manage their human capital resources more strategically.^19 The guidance
recommends agencies analyze their workforce, conduct competency
assessments and analysis, and compare workforce needs against available
skills. Along with OPM, we have encouraged agencies to consider all
available flexibilities under current authorities in pursuing solutions to
long-standing human capital problems. In addition, our guidance outlines
strategies for deploying staff in the face of finite resources.^20

16See [33]GAO-04-39 , p. 2.

17See [34]GAO-02-373SP , pp. 8-9.

18See [35]GAO-04-39 , pp. 2-3.

19OPM, Key Components of a Strategic Human Capital Plan (Washington, D.C.:
September 2005).

DHS Components Are Taking Steps to Improve Workforce Planning for the Attorney
Staffing Process, but Need Better Data Related to Work Activities

Officials at ICE, USCIS, and CBP reported using a range of approaches to
determine their staffing needs, deploy attorneys to locations where they
are needed most, and anticipate and address attorney shortfalls. However,
none of the components' approaches have been documented and no mechanisms
exist for validating attorney staffing decisions. Both ICE and USCIS
officials acknowledged that they do not have reliable workload data to
determine their staffing needs, make allocation decisions, and identify
staffing shortfalls, but report taking actions to obtain more and better
data. Despite not having the data needed to reliably determine staffing
shortfalls, ICE and USCIS's legal offices said that current staffing
levels are insufficient for conducting their work. CBP's legal office told
us that through its workforce management practices it is able to
anticipate shortfalls and develop strategies to avoid them such as
securing funding for additional attorneys before any shortfalls occur.

ICE Lacks Data Needed to Reliably Determine Its Overall Attorney Staffing Needs,
but Is Taking Action to Collect Such Data

Officials from ICE's legal office reported having an approach to staff
attorneys and identify staffing shortfalls; acknowledging that the
methodology for this approach lacks sufficient data and is not documented,
they plan to collect and incorporate workload data into staffing
decisions. To determine how many immigration attorneys are needed for its
work, where those attorneys are to be deployed, and how staffing
shortfalls are to be addressed, ICE's legal office primarily relies on the
number of immigration judges who preside over immigration courts
throughout the country. Specifically, the legal office's officials make
their attorney staffing decisions by establishing a ratio of the number of
attorneys needed per judge--an approach developed before the inception of
DHS by the legacy INS General Counsel's office. Officials in ICE's legal
office said that this approach was, and is currently, based on
management's professional judgment of how their office's workload
translates into the appropriate number of attorneys needed, as well as
where they should be deployed. The ratio is, therefore, used as the basis
for the legal office's decisions to request additional attorneys through
the annual budget process.^21 Officials in ICE's legal office also told us
that for particularly complex, sensitive, or high-profile cases, such as
those involving national security, they supplement the ratio approach by
considering the staffing needs of each of its offices and the historical
and current workload related to these types of cases that are assigned to
each office to help them make staffing decisions. Using this approach, the
legal office reported that it allocated 61 attorneys during fiscal year
2006 to 25 of its field offices to handle these types of cases.

20See [36]GAO/OCG-00-14G , p. 19.

Officials in ICE's legal office told us that they have historically
decided that they should assign two attorneys to handle the office's
immigration workload for every immigration judge--and this forms the basis
of the ratio approach that has been used. These officials also told us
that this decision was based on the assumption that because immigration
judges hear cases 7 to 8 hours each day, one attorney would always need to
be in court and another would be needed to complete other related matters
such as case preparation, legal research, or provide legal advice to ICE
offices. Officials in the legal office also stated that this decision was
based upon factors that were related to the workload that existed at the
time the ratio was established. They said that the staffing ratio approach
is based on professional judgment and historical experience and takes into
consideration some workload data maintained by the immigration courts,
such as the number of appeals stemming from immigration judge
decisions.^22 However, other workload metrics, such as the time attorneys
spend researching and preparing for cases are not considered when making
these decisions because ICE's legal office does not yet have systems fully
in place to track these data, according to its officials. Consequently,
the staffing ratio approach is not based on comprehensive workload data,
nor is it grounded in reliable workload data. For example, one assumption
built into the current staffing ratio is that each ICE attorney conducts
the same amount of work for every immigration judge. However, this may not
always be the case, given that differences exist in the volume and
complexity of cases, which could mean that different numbers of attorneys
are needed.

21Officials from ICE's legal office said that the majority of their
attorneys litigate in immigration courts and provide advice to ICE
employees and that their staffing decisions related to these attorneys are
based on the ratio of attorneys to immigration judges. However, they also
told us that staffing decisions for headquarters attorneys responsible for
providing legal services related to ethics or administrative law are
conducted by establishing a ratio of attorneys to ICE program clients.
Officials from ICE's legal office said that these attorney-to-client
ratios are determined by reviewing workload estimates and benchmarking
those ratios with other executive branch legal programs such as those at
the Departments of Justice and Treasury.

22When an appeal is filed related to an immigration judge's decision, ICE
attorneys are responsible for litigating the case before the Board of
Immigration Appeals.

The legal office's staffing ratio approach to making decisions about
attorney staffing has not been fully successful in helping the agency
avoid staffing shortfalls. Officials from ICE's legal office reported to
Congress in February 2006 that they faced attorney staffing shortfalls due
to rising caseloads, increased complexity in cases, and an expansion of
the agency's mission into areas such as customs law. They told us that
they continue to face shortfalls because recent increases in both the
number and the complexity of immigration cases have led to increases in
the number of cases handled by a judge and in the amount of time required
for case preparation work--all of which has a bearing on attorney staffing
and workloads. These officials also told us that as a result of increased
workloads they often request delays in court proceedings to obtain
sufficient time to prepare for cases, but have no data to quantify the
number of delays requested. Moreover, they said that these delays result
in increased costs for DHS when the cases involve aliens placed in agency
custody. For example, they stated that each day the hearing was delayed
costs DHS approximately an additional $100 for housing an alien in fiscal
year 2006. In addition, officials from ICE's legal office said that an
increase in case complexity and an expansion of the office's
responsibilities, such as providing legal advice regarding customs-related
enforcement matters, also requires additional resources to perform legal
work outside of court.^23 Officials from ICE's legal office told us, for
instance, that prosecution of aliens who pose a threat to national
security--particularly time-consuming cases--has increased from about 50
cases per year before September 11, 2001, to approximately 700 cases in
fiscal year 2006. The legal office officials told us that it had 4
attorneys in headquarters handling national security cases before
September 11, 2001, and 13 attorneys in headquarters handling such cases
in fiscal year 2006. The legal office reported taking action to address
existing attorney shortfalls by requesting funding for additional
attorneys through the annual budget process. For example, the legal office
requested funding for 193 additional attorney positions in fiscal year
2006 as part of its fiscal year 2007 budget request--positions that were
ultimately funded for half of fiscal year 2007 as part of DHS's fiscal
year 2007 appropriation. To avoid future shortfalls, officials from ICE's
legal office said that they are currently working to increase coordination
with the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review
(EOIR), which administers the immigration courts, to anticipate the
placement of new immigration judges or the transfer of existing judges
from one location to another. The legal office officials said that because
a key data element for their workforce planning methodology is the number
and location of immigration judges, increased coordination with EOIR will
allow the legal office to better anticipate its attorney needs at various
locations around the country.

23In its 2006 budget request, ICE's legal office reported that it
regularly provides advice to its field offices on customs-related
enforcement matters, including cargo search and seizure related issues.

Despite these actions, the shortfalls that have arisen as a result of
these changing conditions have, according to officials from ICE's legal
office, affected the agency's ability to carry out its mission. For
example, the legal office officials said that because they currently face
staffing shortfalls, they are unable to respond in a timely manner when an
alien requests a change of venue--that is, a request to move the alien's
case from one court to another court. They also said that that if they
cannot respond to a change of venue and explain why such a request should
not be granted, it is likely that a larger percentage of these requests
will be granted. According to officials from ICE's legal office, aliens
not in agency custody who are granted their request to change venue often
do not appear for their hearings and remain in the country illegally.
Furthermore, they said that the government may incur unnecessary detention
and transportation costs when such unopposed requests are granted to
detained aliens.

Questions about the effectiveness of the legal office's staffing ratio as
a reliable or sufficient means of ensuring that its attorney staffing
needs can be met, and shortfalls averted, are not new. In 2004, a business
consulting firm hired to analyze the legal office's staffing process
concluded that the premise of the ratio approach was no longer valid in
light of rising caseloads and an increasing client base. The consulting
firm also concluded that the premise of the ratio was not valid because
the legal office had experienced a growth in the number of attorneys who
performed management tasks and these attorneys were not included in the
calculation of the ratio. Officials from ICE's legal office stated that
although the consulting firm's report to the office's senior management
underscored a need to improve its attorney staffing process by
incorporating more workload data, they intend to continue using the ratio
approach for determining attorney needs and making allocation decisions
until they can collect such data.

Our prior work on strategic workforce planning states that staffing
decisions, including needs assessments and deployment decisions, should be
based on valid and reliable data.^24 Without basing its attorney needs
assessments as well as its deployment decisions on comprehensive workload
data that are valid and reliable, officials from ICE's legal office cannot
ensure that the ratio approach accurately determines the number of
attorneys the office needs, where they should be deployed, and any
shortfalls they may face.

  ICE Reports Taking Action to Collect Data to Improve Workforce Planning

ICE's legal office has taken some action to improve the decision-making
process for attorney staffing. For example, officials from the legal
office said that in preparation of their fiscal year 2007 budget request,
they adjusted their target attorney-to-judge ratio from 2:1 to 2.5:1 in an
effort to reflect the need for additional attorneys as caseloads increase.
This effort, however, was based, as in the past, primarily on professional
judgment rather than comprehensive workload statistics.

ICE's legal office has also taken steps to enhance its workload data
collection efforts. Officials from this office reported that they deployed
a General Counsel Electronic Management System (GEMS) nationwide, in
fiscal year 2005, to organize and track information on immigration cases
and other workload projects. It also tracks workload measures, such as the
number of hearings attended. ICE legal officials also said that they are
also working on several enhancements to GEMS that the office plans to
implement during fiscal year 2007 that will help to improve its workforce
planning efforts. In 2002, ICE established a Knowledge Management Division
that, among other things, is responsible for ensuring that these
enhancements are implemented. Table 1 describes these enhancements and the
office's timeline for implementing them.

24See [37]GAO-02-373SP , p. 23.

Table 1: ICE's Planned Enhancements to GEMS That It Reports Will Provide
Additional Data to Assist in Its Workforce Planning Efforts

                                                          Planned             
Planned enhancement Description of enhancement planned implementation date 
Time accounting     To provide ICE's legal office with December 2007       
                       the capacity to track time its                         
                       attorneys spend on their work by                       
                       activity.                                              
Performance         To provide ICE's legal office with June/July 2007      
management          the ability to extract information                     
                       from data captured in GEMS to                          
                       generate performance measures that                     
                       are intended to describe how well                      
                       the legal office is meeting its                        
                       mission goals, whether they are on                     
                       track for meeting their                                
                       performance targets, and whether                       
                       their current resources are                            
                       sufficient to meet those goals.                        
                                                                              
                       To identify those cases that                           
                       require the most resources.                            
                                                                              
                       To identify workload trends, which                     
                       will assist ICE's legal office in                      
                       predicting future workloads and                        
                       outcomes.                                              
Knowledge           To provide ICE's attorneys with    August 2007         
management          the ability to readily identify                        
                       and extract information about a                        
                       case or project that is similar to                     
                       other cases or projects other                          
                       attorneys may be working on.                           

Source: ICE's legal office.

Officials in the legal office told us that they also established a working
group to analyze the legal office's processes and to determine measures
that would best describe the office's workload. They also reported
establishing a division that will be responsible for, among other things,
evaluating and validating the additional workload measures captured by
GEMS. According to the legal office's deployment plan for these
enhancements, some of the workload measures that the office plans to
collect will include the number of cases by type and location as well as
the time attorneys spend on these cases. This plan also outlines how the
legal office plans to incorporate these workload measures in its future
attorney workforce planning decisions. For example, it states that
officials from the legal office will determine an average amount of time
attorneys spend on each type of case by reviewing and analyzing the number
of hours attorneys spend on these cases at each field office. As a result,
this average will provide senior management with an indication of the
number of attorneys needed to handle its projected caseload at all of its
field offices. However, ICE's legal office has not fully documented its
plans for enhancing GEMS. Although the Chief from the legal office's
Knowledge Management Division told us that he measures his office's
progress in implementing GEMS enhancements by using project milestones and
orally reports to the Principal Legal Advisor on these issues almost
daily, the office's planning documentation does not address these issues.
Specifically, the documentation does not state how the legal office
intends to measure its progress in making these enhancements or to report
the results of its efforts.

Industry best practices on information technology management stress the
importance of effective planning.^25 Inherent in such planning is the
development and use of program management plans that specify performance
measures and reporting mechanisms. Furthermore, our standards for internal
control in the federal government call for clear documentation.^26 Such
documentation could help ensure better accountability, replication, and
consistency. By not documenting performance measures or mechanisms for
reporting on the status of its efforts to enhance GEMS, ICE's legal office
may not be in a position to effectively monitor its progress in meeting
its goals related to this effort.

  ICE Lacks Documentation for Validating Its Attorney Workforce Planning
  Decisions

ICE's legal office has not documented its methodology or the role of its
staff responsible for determining its attorney needs, identifying and
addressing related shortfalls, or deploying attorneys where they are
needed. Our principles on strategic workforce planning state that the
methodology underlying staffing decisions should be well documented.^27
Our standards for internal control in the federal government also
recognize the need for clear documentation.^28 Without documentation, it
may be difficult for ICE's legal office to review and validate the
decision-making process or for others to independently assess the legal
office's efforts. Furthermore, if the legal office's rationale for its
staffing decisions, including factors it considered when establishing and
changing the ratio, is not documented, the legal office and its
stakeholders may not have and be able to provide assurance that its
staffing processes are being consistently applied or sustained over time.

25GAO, Near-Term Effort to Automate Paper-Based Immigration Files Needs
Planning Improvements, [38]GAO-06-375 (Washington, D.C.: March 2006), p.
14.

26GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government,
[39]GAO/AIMD-00-21 .3 (Washington, D.C.: November 1999), p. 15.

27See [40]GAO-02-373SP , p.25.

28See [41]GAO/AIMD-00-21 .3.1, p. 15

USCIS Acknowledges It Lacks Data Needed to Determine Attorney Staffing Needs,
but Efforts Are Under Way to Address the Problem

Officials with USCIS's legal office stated that they need additional
attorneys to meet current workload demands and that they work with USCIS
program offices to acquire additional attorneys. Acknowledging that the
office has not fully implemented a system to reliably determine its
attorney staffing needs, make allocation decisions, or anticipate and
fully address staffing shortfalls, they reported that they have efforts
under way to resolve these issues. Officials in USCIS's legal office said
that despite its need for additional attorneys to meet its current
workload demands, USCIS's legal office does not have comprehensive
workload data to support requests for additional attorney resources.

USCIS's legal office reported that its approach to managing workforce
planning decisions generally relies on professional judgment. For example,
it said that as part of the annual budget process, senior legal managers
discuss attorney needs and where attorneys should be geographically
located. They also told us that these managers consider two inputs as part
of this process. First, they said that they consider workload estimates by
analyzing spreadsheets that the legal office personnel generate by
recording certain workload activities, such as the total number of legal
actions filed against USCIS. However, these officials said that this
method generates incomplete workload data, since other workload
activities, such as the provision of legal advice to program offices, are
not included on the spreadsheets. Thus, the officials said that these
workload estimates may not be reliable indicators of actual workload
activities. Second, they said the managers use feedback the legal office
solicits from USCIS program offices to help them assess their attorney
needs and determine where to allocate attorneys. This feedback includes
information about recurring legal issues or the need for a particular
field office to have an attorney on-site. Officials in USCIS's legal
office acknowledged that there is no fully implemented system in place, as
of February 2007, to track all of its attorneys' workload such as the
amount of time attorneys spend completing their workload activities or the
total volume of work the office faces. Our prior work on strategic
workforce planning has shown that staffing decisions, including needs
assessments and deployment decisions, should be based on valid and
reliable data.^29 While professional judgment is an important and valuable
element of any decision-making process, without valid and reliable data,
it will be difficult for officials in USCIS's legal office to ensure that
their approach provides a reasonable determination of the number of
attorneys they need, where they should be deployed, or any shortfalls they
may face.

29See [42]GAO-02-373SP , p.23.

Officials in USCIS's legal office report that it has and is taking action
to obtain additional workload data to improve the reliability of its
staffing decisions, including how it identifies shortfalls, and to support
future budget requests. In 2003, to facilitate the transition from legacy
INS to USCIS, USCIS's legal office hired an independent consulting firm to
assess the office's staffing resources and solicit feedback from USCIS
program offices on their legal needs, among other things. In March 2004,
the consulting firm reported to USCIS's legal office on the results of its
assessment.^30 Officials in USCIS's legal office said they used the
information from this assessment to help determine the legal needs of
USCIS program offices and identify areas for improving how the office
provides legal services. In response to the assessment's recommendations,
USCIS's legal office's staff told us that they plan to fully implement a
data management system that will capture all of its work activities by the
end of fiscal year 2007 and that USCIS began efforts to implement this
system by purchasing software for it in October 2006. USCIS legal office
staff told us this new system will allow them to capture comprehensive
workload data such as the volume of legal advice requested and provided,
attorney hours spent on different types of requests (e.g., legal advice or
training), and the number of pending visa petition appeals, among other
things. They said they plan to adjust their methodology for determining
attorney staffing needs, making allocation decisions, and identifying
staffing shortfalls by considering additional data on workload activities
and the time attorneys spend on these activities. They also said they plan
to use these data as support for future budget requests for additional
attorneys and as key inputs for an attorney allocation model they expect
to develop and put in place 1 year after the data management system has
been fully implemented.

The USCIS legal office's Chief of Staff orally reviewed with us the
office's goals, major milestones, work tasks, and monitoring efforts
associated with implementing this system. He told us that the office had,
among other things, completed its design of the functionality requirements
for the system and resolved security issues for installing the software on
USCIS's network in January 2007. He also said that the office had
installed software and conducted tests to ensure it was working properly
on each attorney's computer in February 2007 and plans to spend the rest
of the fiscal year entering data, such as requests for legal advice, into
the system. However, USCIS's legal office has not documented its plans for
implementing this system. Industry best practices stress the importance of
effective planning. Inherent in such planning are the development and use
of program management plans that define, among other things, program goals
and major milestones, delineate work tasks and products and the associated
schedules and resources for achieving them, and specify performance
measures and reporting mechanisms.^31 By not documenting its plans,
USCIS's legal office may not have provided and be able to provide
reasonable assurance that it is implementing its plans as intended to
effectively achieve its goals.

30IBM, Detailed Organizational Assessment Briefing: Office of the Chief
Counsel, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland
Security (March 2004).

  USCIS's Legal Office Coordinates with Other USCIS Offices to Remedy Some
  Attorney Staffing Shortfalls throughout USCIS

To address attorney staffing shortfalls, USCIS's legal office has a
strategy in place--but an acknowledged lack of reliable data on workload
requirements limits the strategy's effectiveness in reducing shortfalls.
According to staff in the legal office, on at least a quarterly basis,
officials meet with the leadership of USCIS's program offices to discuss,
on a case-by-case basis, converting vacant positions within the program
offices into attorney positions as a way to help offset shortfalls.
USCIS's legal office told us these discussions focus on five factors: (1)
the legal staff resources the program office believes it needs to achieve
its mission, (2) the number of attorneys and program staff present at the
geographic location of the vacant position, (3) the perceived need to have
an attorney on-site to address legal issues, (4) estimates of the number
of pending visa appeals at the location, and (5) the quality and volume of
decisions being made at the location. Once these discussions have
concluded, USCIS's legal office said the program office decides whether
having the support of an additional attorney would better help the program
office achieve its goals than would hiring an additional program staff
member. USCIS's legal office staff said if the program office decides in
favor of hiring an additional attorney, the legal office will work with
the program office to recruit and hire an attorney to fill the vacant
position.

Officials in USCIS's legal office said that, depending on the agreements
reached with the program office, the salary and related expenses for the
newly converted attorney position can be funded entirely by the program
office. Alternatively, these officials stated that both the program and
legal offices could contribute funding to cover the salary and other
expenses associated with the position. USCIS's legal office said it has
obtained 10 additional attorney positions through this process since 2004
(app. I provides additional details on these positions). Although USCIS
attorneys say these additional attorney positions have helped the legal
office meet some of its workload demands, they still feel that they are
understaffed because they are unable to meet current workload demands.

31See [43]GAO-06-375 , p. 14.

Two concerns exist with USCIS's approach to managing its staffing
shortfalls. First, as previously discussed, USCIS legal officials
acknowledged that the attorney workload estimates on which its decisions
about shortfalls are based may not be reliable because comprehensive
workload data are not collected and analyzed; such data would allow
USCIS's legal office to reliably identify shortfalls for the office as a
whole. Second, USCIS's legal office has not documented policies and
procedures that identify the staff responsible for managing such
shortfalls and for assessing its attorney needs, deploying its attorneys,
and identifying shortfalls. In addition, the legal office has not
documented its approach for these staffing processes. As stated earlier,
our prior work on strategic workforce planning and our standards for
internal control in the federal government have stressed the need for
clearly documenting significant events.^32 Without documented plans and
procedures, USCIS's legal office may not be consistently evaluating the
factors it considers important when assessing attorney needs, determining
where attorneys should be located, or converting program office positions
into attorney positions over time. Furthermore, without such
documentation, it will be difficult or USCIS's legal office to review and
validate its decision-making process or for others to independently assess
the legal office's workforce planning efforts.

Although USCIS's legal office reported that it has been working to
implement better workload tracking procedures, until these efforts are
completed and fully documented, it cannot reliably determine its staffing
needs and related shortfalls or take action to fully address such
shortfalls. USCIS legal office officials also said that when the office
was initially created, they did not anticipate that defending lawsuits
brought against USCIS in federal court would constitute the majority of
their workload, limiting their ability to provide sufficient legal advice
to USCIS program offices. Thus, the legal office remains at risk of not
being able to meet its mission goals. For example, officials told us that
when an attorney visits a field office that does not usually have an
attorney on-site, the visiting attorney is generally confronted with lines
of program staff waiting to seek legal advice at his/her office door.
USCIS attorneys also told us that by not being able to provide adequate
legal training to program staff on changes in immigration law, policy, and
related proceedings, USCIS is at risk of making incorrect decisions
related to benefit adjudications. USCIS's program officials also confirmed
the legal office's position by telling us that they do not get as much
legal support as they would like. For instance, the program officials said
that additional legal support is needed to improve the quality of the
program offices' adjudication decisions, particularly denials. The program
officials also said that without adequate legal support, the agency
remains vulnerable to an increasing number of appeals and adverse
decisions that could have been avoided through proper legal review.

32See [44]GAO/AIMD-00-21 .3.1, p. 15, and [45]GAO-02-373SP , p. 25.

CBP Reports Implementing a Successful Attorney Workforce Staffing Approach, but
Lacks Documentation for Validating Its Decisions

CBP's legal office reported that it has an approach in place to determine
its attorney staffing needs, deploy attorneys to locations where they are
needed, and anticipate attorney shortfalls, although the approach has not
been documented and no documentation exists for validating CBP's attorney
staffing decisions. The office told us that its methodology for this
approach consists of analyzing (1) workload statistics, (2) feedback from
CBP program officers regarding the legal needs of those offices, and (3)
estimates of the time it takes attorneys to conduct their activities.
After completing this analysis, the legal office's senior management said
that they apply their professional judgment to make attorney staffing
decisions.

CBP's legal office said that it uses workload statistics from its Chief
Counsel Tracking System (CCTS) to determine the frequency and level of
service its attorneys are asked to provide throughout the year.^33 CCTS
captures data on the type and volume of workload activities conducted by
its attorneys, such as the number of legal training courses conducted by
attorneys for Border Patrol agents and the number of times CBP attorneys
provide advice to Border Patrol personnel on land use issues. Officials in
the legal office said that they conduct workload evaluations of these
statistics by analyzing the number of cases opened, number of cases
closed, and case types, by attorney and office location, to help inform
attorney staffing decisions. The legal office officials said they also
review statistics in CCTS on a quarterly basis to look for trends in work
areas. Furthermore, they said that such an analysis helps the office
anticipate attorney needs in specific work areas as well as assist in
highlighting locations where attorneys may need to be deployed. For
example, they stated that when DHS was established, approximately 9,000
employees assigned to field offices located along the southern border of
the United States were transferred to CBP from the former INS. Officials
from CBP's legal office said that they reviewed statistics in CCTS to help
them determine the amount and type of legal work generated by CBP
employees with comparable responsibilities. In turn, they said that this
helped the legal office decide to create four new field offices for
attorneys in Texas--Laredo, McAllen, Del Rio, and Marfa--and to place
additional attorneys in El Paso, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona. The legal
office also said that it conducts workload evaluations throughout the
year, as needed, by holding discussions among the executive staff to
ensure that each headquarters and field client is afforded an appropriate
level of legal expertise.^34 The Chief Counsel stated that he talks with
his five Associate Chief Counsels in the field almost daily, focusing on
issues such as the staff's approach to completing their work, issues to be
resolved when a case becomes increasingly complex, workload priorities,
and any workload surges occurring in particular issue areas or at specific
locations to help inform staffing decisions. Officials in the legal office
also stated that it compares the experience and skills of its attorneys
with the legal needs of its clients when determining in which location
attorneys might best be placed.

33The Chief Counsel Tracking System is an automated system that maintains
data on legal matters handled by CBP's legal office. The Deputy Chief
Counsel told us that, as a general rule, the legal office's attorneys are
responsible for opening cases in the Chief Counsel Tracking System only if
they take more than 30 minutes to complete. The legal office's personnel
can access this system to obtain data on the status of a case or to obtain
information about the office's workload. Officials in the legal office
told us that this system has been in place for more than 20 years, as it
was originally maintained by the legacy agency, U.S. Customs Service,
Office of Chief Counsel, but that technology enhancements have been made
over the years.

Officials from CBP's legal office told us that another key input in their
staffing decisions involves the feedback they solicit from CBP program
officers to learn what current and projected legal services the program
offices require. For example, they told us that Border Patrol program
officers told the legal office's staff that its need for legal services
would increase because CBP plans to place an additional 2,500 Border
Patrol agents along the southern U.S. border in fiscal year 2007. As a
result, the Chief Counsel reported obtaining funding for 15 additional
attorneys based on a ratio of 6 additional Chief Counsel attorneys being
needed for each 1,000 newly added Border Patrol agents. The Chief Counsel
told us that he developed this ratio using his professional judgment and
actual case data from over 3 1/2 years of providing legal support to the
Border Patrol program officials in CBP. He said that in developing this
ratio he also considered workforce statistics on the number of (1)
litigation cases related to border patrol activities, (2) administrative
proceedings, (3) employee hearings, and (4) the Border Patrol's requests
for advice. He also said that these statistics provided him with an
indication of the volume of work stemming from border patrol activities
and the number of attorneys needed to efficiently manage the work his
office does for the Border Patrol component of CBP.

34CBP's legal office's executive staff consists of the Chief Counsel,
Deputy Chief Counsel, three headquarters Associate Chief Counsels and five
Associate Chief Counsels in the field.

Officials in CBP's legal office told us that another key data element
involved in attorney staffing decisions is estimates of the time it takes
attorneys to complete their work. The Chief Counsel said that he makes
such estimates relying upon his own experience and professional judgment.
The legal office officials said that CCTS does not maintain information on
the time it takes attorneys to complete their work, although they
considered incorporating such a component into the system in 1999. They
said that they decided not to incorporate such a component into CCTS
because the benefits of having a component to capture data on the time it
takes attorneys to conduct their activities would not exceed the costs of
developing and implementing the component. The Chief Counsel told us that
there was no available documentation of the analysis supporting this
decision.

  CBP Reports that Staffing Shortfalls Have Been Avoided

CBP's Chief Counsel told us that as a result of his current workload
management practices, his office is able to avoid staffing shortfalls by
securing funding to acquire additional resources before any shortfalls
occur--although documentation is not available to validate this
conclusion. He also said that this approach allows CBP's attorney offices
to fulfill workload priorities, meet the legal service needs throughout
the agency, and attain performance targets such as addressing litigation
and administrative hearing issues by court-imposed deadlines. He stated
that when he determines a need for additional resources, he will work
directly with CBP's Office of Finance and CBP's Commissioner to obtain
funding to acquire these resources. For example, in fiscal year 2005, the
Chief Counsel obtained funding to hire 23 additional attorneys to assist
in addressing anticipated increases in the office's workload. The Chief
Counsel made his funding request after conducting workload evaluations of
CCTS data and determining that his office's workload was steadily
increasing in a number of areas. In a memo to CBP's Commissioner related
to this request, the Chief Counsel explained that he would need additional
attorneys to (1) address the increasing number of administrative hearings,
(2) provide litigation support to the Department of Justice, and (3)
provide legal advice and training to CBP program offices.

  CBP Does Not Have Written Policies and Procedures for Its Attorney Staffing
  Process

CBP's legal office does not have any written policies and procedures that
describe the criteria, methodology, analyses, data, and staff responsible
for assessing its attorney needs, determining where to deploy its
attorneys, and anticipating and addressing staffing shortfalls before they
occur. Although the legal office maintains internal memorandums that
document its requests for additional staffing, the memorandums provided to
us include general information about the legal office's increased workload
in various areas, and do not explain how the legal office determined its
staffing needs or shortfalls.

Our prior work on strategic workforce planning has identified the need for
such written policies and procedures.^35 Moreover, our standards for
internal control in the federal government calls for clear documentation
of policies and procedures that is readily available for examination.^36
Without documented policies and procedures, there is no institutional
record of the legal office's actions. Therefore, it may be difficult to
review and validate the decision-making process for effective management
oversight. Effective management oversight is important for ensuring sound
stewardship and accountability of resources. Moreover, without documented
policies and procedures, CBP's legal office may not be able to ensure that
its staff consistently applies criteria it has established, implements
procedures as intended, or sustains those efforts over time.

Conclusions

Since its inception, DHS and its components have performed an important
role in providing a range of law enforcement, immigration inspection, and
benefits adjudication services that help to protect the United States
against potential terrorist actions and address other problems arising
from illegal immigration. To achieve its mission in these areas, it is
important that DHS be able to manage its human capital needs to ensure
that skilled personnel are available when needed. The hundreds of staff
attorneys who litigate in immigration courts, and provide other legal
services to support immigration enforcement, inspection, and benefit
service missions are a key part of DHS's workforce.

35See [46]GAO-02-373SP , p.25.

36See [47]GAO/AIMD-00-21 .3.1, p. 20.

Although each component's legal office has developed its own approach to
attorney workforce planning, there are opportunities for ICE and USCIS to
enhance their planning processes to help ensure that sufficient legal
staff are available to litigate immigration cases and perform other
necessary legal services. ICE and USCIS report having an insufficient
number of attorneys to cope with rising caseloads. More reliable, accurate
data on a variety of attorney workload measures could better position
officials in anticipating staffing needs--and in presenting a well-founded
case to Congress for appropriate resource levels. ICE and USCIS legal
officials acknowledged that their attorney staffing processes have not
always afforded a reliable basis for determining how many attorneys are
needed to manage workloads, how legal workloads can be managed to avert
shortfalls, and how best to deploy available attorney staff to ensure they
are placed where most needed. Both components are taking steps to address
this problem--but their efforts to implement new workload tracking systems
or improve data collection on workforce activities have not been
completed. Data-driven workload tracking and data collection efforts are
necessary to help the legal offices ensure that they are in a position to
anticipate and justify requests for appropriate resources needed to meet
mission goals related to immigration enforcement, inspection, and service
functions, and to make sound and reliable staffing decisions.

With respect to ICE, its legal office has not documented performance
measures or mechanisms for reporting on the status of its enhancements to
its workload tracking system (the General Counsel Electronic Management
System). Thus, the legal office may not be able to provide reasonable
assurance that its enhancements are being implemented as intended. Nor may
ICE's legal office be able to effectively monitor its progress in making
these enhancements. Moreover, ICE has not documented its methodology for
conducting workforce planning efforts, the personnel responsible for
conducting such efforts, and its rationale for making staffing decisions
including any factors it considered in making those decisions. Without
documentation of this methodology and a rationale for making staffing
decisions, it will be difficult for the legal office to effectively
monitor the results of its staffing decisions or for the results to be
independently validated. Furthermore, without clearly documenting the
personnel responsible for conducting workforce planning efforts, it may
not be possible for the legal office to monitor or ensure accountability.

USCIS also faces challenges associated with its attorney workload tracking
system. Although USCIS legal office's Chief of Staff indicated that his
office has goals, major milestones, work tasks, and monitoring efforts
associated with implementing this system, there is no written
documentation associated with any of these elements. Without clearly
documenting program goals, major milestones, work tasks, products (such as
the time accounting system), and the associated schedules and resources
for achieving them, it may not be possible to effectively implement this
system as intended or on schedule. In addition, as with ICE, USCIS's legal
office has not documented performance measures or mechanisms for reporting
on the status of its workload tracking system. Thus, the agency may not be
able to provide reasonable assurance that its enhancements are being
implemented as intended or be able to effectively monitor its progress in
making these enhancements. Further, as noted for ICE, USCIS has not
documented its approach for conducting workforce planning efforts or the
personnel responsible for conducting such efforts.

While CBP appears to be managing its attorney workforce planning needs
successfully, and has avoided attorney staffing shortfalls, it too lacks
formal written documentation that clearly describes the core components of
its workforce planning efforts--criteria, methodology, analysis, data, and
the personnel responsible for these efforts. Without this documentation,
CBP's planning process cannot be independently validated.

Recommendations for Executive Action

To strengthen the workforce planning efforts needed to achieve the legal
offices' goals, we recommend that the Secretary of the Department of
Homeland Security direct the General Counsel to take the following five
actions:

With respect to ICE's Office of the Principal Legal Advisor:

           o document an implementation plan for measuring progress in making
           enhancements to the General Counsel Electronic Management System
           and to report on the results of efforts to enhance the system and

           o develop documentation that clearly defines its methodology for
           conducting workforce planning efforts, the personnel responsible
           for conducting such efforts to enhance accountability, and its
           rationale for making staffing decisions, including any factors it
           considered in making those decisions.

With respect to USCIS's Office of Chief Counsel:

           o document the office's plans for implementing a workforce data
           management system that clearly explains the goals of such an
           effort, major milestones, work tasks and products and the
           associated schedules and resources for achieving them, as well as
           performance measures and reporting mechanisms associated with the
           effort and

           o develop documentation that clearly describes its approach and
           the personnel responsible for conducting workforce planning
           efforts related to (1) using workforce data and other information
           related to time attorneys spend completing their work activities
           to develop needs assessments and deploy staffing resources where
           they are needed most, and (2) identifying and addressing staffing
           shortfalls to enhance accountability over staffing decisions.

With respect to CBP's Office of Chief Counsel:

           o develop documentation that clearly describes its criteria,
           methodology, analysis, data, and the personnel responsible for
           workforce planning efforts related to (1) using workforce data and
           other information related to time attorneys spend completing their
           work activities to develop needs assessments and deploy staffing
           resources where they are needed most, and (2) anticipating or
           addressing staffing shortfalls to enhance accountability over
           staffing decisions.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided a draft of this report to DHS for review and comment. DHS
provided written comments on March 23, 2007, which are presented in
appendix II. In commenting on the draft report, DHS reported that it
generally concurred with four of our recommendations, but disagreed with
the fifth.

ICE's legal office agreed with the intent of our first recommendation that
it document an implementation plan for measuring progress in making
enhancements to the General Counsel Electronic Management System and to
report on the results of efforts to enhance the system. The legal office
commented that ICE's Office of the Chief Information Officer maintains
documentation on the General Counsel Electronic Management System's
life-cycle management process that includes documents such as early design
description documents, flowcharts of the office processes affected by the
General Counsel Electronic Management System, recommended office
procedures for implementation, and planned enhancements description
documents.

We reviewed documents, such as the planned enhancements description
documents, relevant to this issue prior to sending our draft report to DHS
for comment. At that time, these documents did not contain information on
how ICE planned to measure its progress in making enhancements to the
General Counsel Electronic Management System or how ICE planned to report
on the results of its efforts to enhance the system. However, after we
provided our draft report to DHS for comment, ICE's legal office drafted a
task order to contract with a software developer to assist in making
enhancements to its General Counsel Electronic Management System. As part
of this task order, the legal office included a listing of key milestones
for system enhancements, including information on measuring progress in
making such enhancements. The legal office also included documentation in
this task order that clearly articulates how, when, and to whom a status
report on the results of efforts to enhance the system should be
communicated. We believe these actions address the intent of the
recommendation and will assist ICE's legal office in effectively
monitoring its progress in meeting its goals related to this effort and in
obtaining reasonable assurance that its enhancements are being implemented
as intended.

ICE's legal office also agreed with our second recommendation, that it
develop documentation that clearly defines its methodology for conducting
workforce planning efforts, the personnel responsible for conducting such
efforts, and its rationale for making staffing decisions, including any
factors it considered in making those decisions. We believe such
documentation is necessary to assist ICE's legal office in reviewing and
validating its workforce planning decisions and in obtaining reasonable
assurance that its staffing processes are consistently applied and
sustained over time.

In addition, ICE's legal office took issue with our finding that its
staffing ratio of attorneys to immigration judges is not based on
comprehensive workload data or grounded in reliable workload data. The
legal office cited that the ratio was developed within an analytical
framework based on workload data of the number of active cases, the number
of cases received, and the time it took to complete a case in immigration
court. However, as we discussed earlier in this report, officials from
ICE's legal office acknowledged that their approach for staffing attorneys
and identifying shortfalls lacks sufficient workload data, such as the
time attorneys spend researching and preparing for cases, because the
office does not yet have systems fully in place to track these data,
although efforts are under way to collect such data. Thus, the ratio is
not based on comprehensive workload data. Furthermore, as we discussed
earlier in this report, the consulting firm the legal office hired to
analyze its staffing process concluded that the premise of the ratio
approach was no longer valid in light of rising caseloads and an
increasing client base. The consulting firm also concluded that the
premise of the ratio was not valid because the legal office had
experienced a growth in the number of attorneys who performed management
tasks and these attorneys were not included in the calculation of the
ratio. Once comprehensive and reliable workload data are available, the
legal office should be in a position to appropriately modify the ratio to
assist in future workforce planning efforts.

USCIS's legal office agreed with our third recommendation, that it
document the office's plans for implementing a workforce data management
system that clearly explains the goals of such an effort, major
milestones, work tasks and products, and the associated schedules and
resources for achieving them, as well as performance measures and
reporting mechanisms for the effort. The legal office also noted that it
intends to take action to address this recommendation.

USCIS's legal office noted that it generally agreed with our fourth
recommendation, that it develop documentation that clearly describes its
approach and the personnel responsible for conducting workforce planning
efforts. The legal office indicated that once it has identified and
captured workload data, it will be in a better position to determine the
type and volume of legal services requested by its clients as well as
whether current attorney levels are sufficient to address the legal needs
of the agency.

CBP's legal office did not agree with our fifth recommendation, to develop
documentation that clearly describes its criteria, methodology, analysis,
data, and the personnel responsible for conducting workforce planning
efforts. The legal office commented that it had provided us with
documentation of its workload data and excerpts from its Attorney Practice
Guide that describes the function and use of its Chief Counsel Tracking
System (CCTS), an automated system for maintaining workload data. While
this documentation does provide information on workload data for the
office, our conclusions and recommendation are based on the fact that it
does not describe or identify the legal office's methodology for how it
systematically analyzes and summarizes this information to determine the
number of attorneys the legal office needs and where to deploy those
attorneys. In addition, the legal office commented that it had provided us
with copies of two internal memorandums relating to addressing staffing
shortfalls. However, these memorandums provide general information about
the legal office's increased workload in various areas, and do not explain
how the legal office determined its staffing needs or shortfalls. On the
basis of the legal office's comments, we added a discussion to this report
to clarify the information included in these memorandums.

Although we agree with CBP's legal office that the degree to which it
documents its workforce planning efforts is a management decision, we
believe that documentation should be sufficient to allow management
decisions to be validated by independent review. On the basis of our
audit, we concluded that additional documentation was needed to enhance
the transparency of the legal office's decision-making process. Such
documentation could also be used by the legal office's management to track
its workforce planning efforts over time and make continuous improvements
as appropriate. Furthermore, as previously stated, our standards for
internal control in the federal government require that significant events
be clearly documented and that the documentation be readily available for
examination by an independent entity. Appropriate documentation is an
internal control activity that helps ensure that management's directives
are carried out as intended. Such documentation is critical in creating an
institutional record in the event of staffing changes to help sustain
workforce planning procedures over time.

In addition, CBP's legal office commented that while workforce planning
principles included in our exposure draft, A Model of Strategic Human
Capital Management, may be useful to managing large-scale federal
operations, it believes the principles are inapplicable to small offices
such as CBP's legal office, which has nearly 200 attorneys.^37 We
disagree. We believe that the core planning principles, critical success
factors, and fundamental ideas discussed in this report, such as having
workforce planning approaches with clearly defined, well-documented,
transparent, and consistently applied criteria for making human capital
investments, are appropriate for all workforce planning efforts, including
those conducted by CBP's legal office.

DHS also provided technical comments, which we incorporated as
appropriate.

37See [48]GAO-02-373SP .

We plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days after the
date of this report. At that time, we will send copies to selected
Congressional Committees; the Director of the Office of Management and
Budget; and other interested parties. We will also make copies available
to others on request. In addition, the report will be available on GAO's
Web site at http://www.gao.gov .

If your office or staff have any questions concerning this report, please
contact me at (202) 512-8777 or by e-mail at [email protected]. Other GAO
contacts and key contributors to this report are listed in appendix III.

Richard M. Stana
Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues

Appendix I: USCIS Program Office Positions Converted to Attorney Positions

To help address legal needs of the United States Customs and Immigration
Service (USCIS) program offices, the USCIS Office of Chief Counsel (OCC)
told us that its staff meets with the leadership of USCIS's program
offices, at least quarterly, to discuss converting vacant positions in the
program offices to OCC attorney positions. As a result, the USCIS OCC
reports that it has obtained 10 attorney positions through this process
since fiscal year 2004. Table 2 illustrates the number of program office
positions that USCIS converted to attorney positions for fiscal years 2004
through 2006 by program office.

Table 2: USCIS Program Office Positions Converted to Attorney Positions
for Fiscal Years 2004-2006 by Program Office

Originating program office                   Number of converted positions 
Domestic Operations^a                                                    4 
National Security Records and Verification^b                             3 
Office of the Chief Information Officer^c                                1 
Security and Investigations^d                                            1 
Transformation^e                                                         1 
Total                                                                   10 

Source: USCIS data.

aUSCIS Domestic Operations is responsible for processing and adjudicating
applications, petitions, and related fees and for providing benefit
decisions to customers.

bThe National Security and Records and Verification program office is
responsible for establishing policies and procedures related to the
management of alien files and related records; developing, coordinating,
and leading the national anti-fraud operations for USCIS; overseeing
policies and procedures pertaining to background checks on applicants and
petitioners; and providing verification information to federal, state, and
local benefit-granting agencies.

cThe Office of the Chief Information Officer is responsible for providing
leadership in the delivery of innovative, reliable, and responsive
information technology services to USCIS and its customers.

dThe Office of Security and Investigations is responsible for overseeing
continuity of operations planning and implementation, securing
communications and document storage, providing security awareness
training, and implementing agencywide physical and facility security
programs.

eThe Transformation Office is responsible for developing, coordinating,
prioritizing, and managing plans and initiatives for improving USCIS
business processes and technology.

Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Homeland Security

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact:

Richard M. Stana (202) 512-8777

Acknowledgments:

In addition to the contact named above, Debra B. Sebastian, Assistant
Director; Amy L. Bernstein; R. Rochelle Burns; Frances A. Cook; Jennifer
A. Gregory; Wilfred B. Holloway; and Paul G. Revesz made key contributions
to this report.

(440521)

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www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-206 .

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For more information, contact Richard Stana at (202) 512-8777 or
[email protected].

Highlights of [57]GAO-07-206 , a report to the Honorable F. James
Sensenbrenner, Jr., House of Representatives

April 2007

DHS IMMIGRATION ATTORNEYS

Workload Analysis and Workforce Planning Efforts Lack Data and
Documentation

The legal staff of key Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
components--Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Customs and Border Protection
(CBP)--perform important immigration enforcement, inspection, and service
functions. This report addresses the actions ICE, USCIS, and CBP legal
offices are taking to identify attorney needs, determine where those
attorneys should be deployed, and address staffing shortfalls. To conduct
its work, GAO interviewed component senior legal office officials in
headquarters and regional offices and reviewed available documentation on
staffing.

[58]What GAO Recommends

GAO is recommending that ICE's legal office fully document its plans for
incorporating additional workforce data and enhancing its workforce
tracking system; USCIS's legal office document its plans for implementing
a workload tracking system; and all three legal offices document their
attorney workforce planning processes. DHS generally agreed with four of
the five recommendations. CBP's legal office disagreed with the
recommendation to document its attorney workforce planning efforts. It
believes that the core workforce planning principles discussed in this
report are inapplicable to small offices such as its office. GAO believes
that these planning principles are appropriate.

GAO's prior work on strategic workforce planning states that staffing
decisions should be based on valid and reliable data. However, ICE and
USCIS's legal offices do not currently have such data available, though
efforts are under way to obtain the data. Moreover, GAO's standards for
internal controls in the federal government call for clear documentation,
but none of the three legal offices have fully documented the processes,
procedures, and data they use in their workforce planning decisions.

ICE legal officials acknowledged that while an approach is in place for
identifying attorney staffing needs, more data are needed to improve their
attorney staffing decisions to help ensure that a sufficient number of
attorneys are available to handle rising caseloads. ICE's legal office has
relied primarily on its professional judgment to set a staffing ratio
between attorneys and immigration judges. It also uses a workload system
that tracks, for instance, the number of cases prepared. But attorney
time, and other metrics, are not tracked. The legal office is working to
incorporate these and other data into its existing system by December
2007. ICE's legal office has not yet fully documented its plans for
enhancing its workload system by discussing how it intends to measure its
progress or report the results of its efforts. Without such documentation,
the office may not be able to effectively monitor its progress in meeting
its goals related to this effort. Nor has the office documented its
overall attorney workforce planning process, making it difficult for the
office to validate its staffing decisions.

USCIS officials acknowledged that its attorney workforce planning approach
is based on estimates of workload data, such as the number of legal
actions filed against USCIS, and that it is not possible to reliably
determine attorney needs or anticipate shortfalls based on these
estimates. Officials stated that DHS has not been in a position to support
a request for additional attorneys for USCIS, because USCIS lacks
sufficiently reliable data. These officials said that they coordinate with
other USCIS offices to acquire additional legal resources. Efforts to
implement a comprehensive workload system are to be completed by the end
of fiscal year 2007, but the legal office has not yet documented its (1)
plans for implementing this system describing goals, milestones, and other
elements or (2) attorney workforce planning process. Thus, the office may
not have reasonable assurance that its personnel are implementing
workforce planning efforts as intended.

CBP legal officials reported implementing a successful approach for
assessing staffing needs by analyzing workload statistics, soliciting
feedback from CBP program offices on their legal needs, and estimating the
time attorneys need to complete their work. Using this method, the Chief
Counsel said that the legal office has not experienced staffing shortfalls
and has met rising workloads by obtaining funding to hire additional
attorneys. However, CBP's legal office lacks documentation of its attorney
staffing process, making it difficult to review and validate the success
of its approach.

References

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