Remember the transformation program USCIS launched years ago to convert their paper filing system to electronic filing? Well, after 10 years and billions of dollars, it is far from done. The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently released a report detailing their progress, and it isn’t pretty:
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) currently expects that its
Transformation Program will cost up to $3.1 billion and be fully deployed no later
than March 2019, which is an increase of approximately $1 billion and delay of
over 4 years from its initial July 2011 baseline. In March 2012, the program
began to significantly change its acquisition strategy to address various technical
challenges (see table).
So in short, the USCIS program is $1 billion over budget and 4 years behind schedule. If this were to happen in the private sector, I don’t know how many companies would be able to survive after a failure of this magnitude. USCIS initially awarded the contract to IBM, which was never mentioned in the GAO report, but later switched to other suppliers. Hopefully this time they can get their act together and accomplish something.
