Data Quality Improvements Needed to Track Adjudicative Decisions

We determined that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has not implemented an effective process to track adjudicative decisions and ensure data integrity in CLAIMS3. Specifically, USCIS cannot reliably trace adjudicative decisions recorded in CLAIMS3 back to the Immigration Services Officers responsible for those decisions. Our analysis of fiscal year 2015-2017 CLAIMS3 data showed that only 66 percent of adjudicative decisions in CLAIMS3 could be tracked. Further, CLAIMS3 data are not sufficiently reliable to support other key USCIS management operations. Particularly, USCIS investigative units cannot use CLAIMS3 to perform proactive fraud monitoring and management and productivity reports may be inaccurate. We made eight recommendations to improve the quality of adjudicative decisions recorded in CLAIMS3 and to address data reliability issues. USCIS concurred with all eight recommendations.