INS faces tech challenges in Homeland Security transition

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) will face some daunting technological challenges as it becomes part of the Homeland Security Department and dramatically reorganizes its internal structure, a senior INS official said Thursday.

"To fully realize success in the Department of Homeland Security, we need to exploit technologies that we have only dabbled in up to this point," Mike Becraft, the INS' acting deputy commissioner, said during a conference sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

Becraft noted that for much of the past decade, the INS lacked an "enterprise architecture," or a blueprint to guide its efforts to integrate information systems, reduce paperwork and improve efficiency. "We didn't know what our business models really were," Becraft said. "Frankly, I think we wasted a lot of money. We really didn't know what we were about, and we know much more about that today. But the sharing of information ... is still going to be a challenge."

When the INS moves into Homeland Security next week, its service and enforcement functions will be reorganized into separate entities. The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services will report to Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Gordon England and will handle matters such as naturalization petitions and visa adjudications. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be part of the department's directorate on border and transportation security.

Becraft said that sharing information with each other-and with other border security agencies such as the Customs Service-will be a major challenge for the immigration divisions. "We're all interconnected now, but we have to be better interconnected in the future," he said.

Creating seamless information-sharing systems that provide immediate access to quality data will be a major challenge for immigration officials, according to Becraft. He said those types of systems could have prevented much of the controversy surrounding the INS' five-month-old National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which has raised concerns about racial profiling, violations of civil liberties and the handling of immigrants' personal information.

NSEERS requires certain non-immigrant aliens who arrived in the United States before Sept. 11, 2002, to register with the INS and provide information such as their addresses, their parents' names and their educational histories. Becraft said some foreign nationals who have voluntarily registered have been inappropriately detained because "we did not have the ability ... to immediately go into our data systems to find out whether or not what they said was legitimate."

"Our inability to get that information immediately caused a tremendous explosion in the Iranian community, a tremendous explosion in the press and in one sense put another nail in our coffin," Becraft added.

Another "monumental task" for immigration officials will be overcoming cultural barriers that often prevent effective information sharing, Becraft said. "One of the reasons the Department of Homeland Security was created was to break down those barriers," he noted. "Having the technology readily available [to share information] will eliminate a lot of that frustration."