DHS spends $1B to digitize, just one immigration form obtainable on

By 2012, it was one of the worst kept secrets at DHS that the planned computer system was hampered by hundreds of critical software defects and other glitches, according to The Post. The only available online form is an application for renewing or replacing a lost green card.

Processing immigration applications in the agency’s paper-based system is notorious for delays and often involves shipping paperwork across the country.

And that’s after 11 years working on the project, known in the agency as the “Transformation Program”, which was originally supposed to be finished in 2013 and cost a half-billion dollars. More forms will be added to the online portal by the end of 2016, he said, which are expected to account for 41 percent of all filings. The records and interviews show that it was not until three years after the initial allocation of $500 million to the project that the basic plans for the computer system were built. Even so, the Post reports that many still have to wait a year to get their replacement cards, if they get them at all. “It’s a huge albatross around our necks”, said Kenneth Palinkas, former head of the USCIS union.

“Aside from the incompetence associated with the expensive failure to bring the management of the immigration process into the 21 century, this waste of taxpayers’ money demonstrates that the federal bureaucracy can not manage to effectively carry out our existing immigration policies in the public interest”, Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told the Washington Examiner. And pressure from the Obama administration – which, as the WaPo reported, considered the program a vital part of its plans to reform the immigration system – didn’t help.

“This is the same approach used in leading technology companies such as Netflix, Amazon, and Etsy, and large companies like Target, Nordstrom, Disney, and Capital One”, Johnson said.

Since May 2012, exactly three forms have been digitized and put online. “But, rather than deem the original program “too big to fail” and continue further down the wrong path, DHS made the hard decision to fundamentally reboot the program around the latest industry best practices and approaches”.

“We took a fresh start – a fix that required an overhaul of the development process – from contracting to development methodology to technology”, a USCIS spokesman told the newspaper.

Inouye went on to say that the new system has been able to process about 1.2 million requests and that based on that process, USCIS was now confident it was “moving in the right direction”.