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If there's one thing politicians of all stripes can agree on, it's this: The immigration system is broken. What's less obvious is the extent to which that's physically true. An online system that was supposed to automate the processing of green cards and other immigration benefits has struggled to function properly since at least 2009. Now Jerry Markon writes at the Washington Post that, the US government has spent more than $1 billion trying to replace its antiquated paper approach to managing immigration and a decade into the project, all that officials have to show for their effort is a single form that's now available for online applications and a single type of fee that immigrants pay electronically. The 94 other forms can be filed only with paper. The project called ELIS, run by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), was originally supposed to cost a half-billion dollars and be finished in 2013. Instead, it's now projected to reach up to $3.1 billion and be done nearly four years from now, putting in jeopardy efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration policies, handle immigrants already seeking citizenship and detect national security threats. "You're going on 11 years into this project, they only have one form, and we're still a paper-based agency,'' says Kenneth Palinkas, former president of the union that represents employees at the immigration agency. "It's a huge albatross around our necks.''
Government watchdogs have repeatedly blamed the mammoth problems on poor management by DHS, and in particular by the immigration agency. When the project began, DHS was only two years old, cobbled together after the Sept. 11 attacks from myriad other government agencies, and the department was still reeling. "There was virtually no oversight back then,'' says a former federal official. "DHS was like the Wild West on big acquisitions." "The biggest problem is that the holes that were in the system that allowed the terrorists to come in—for 9/11, the Times Square bomber, all of those people—came through USCIS" and the flaws in the system remain, says a USCIS manager who departed within the past year and requested anonymity for fear of retaliation that could affect future employment. "They don't have any real-time validation of any of the documents" from banks and higher education schools. The long-delayed website has burned through more than a billion dollars, mainly from refugees, asylum seekers and other foreigners who fund the system through application fees. It now faces an influx of more than 5 million petitioners under Obama's executive actions on immigration—if ELIS ever becomes capable of handling the relevant forms.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:16PM
IBM is who won the contract to implement this, and like all private contractors who won government contracts, they're milking it for all its worth, always behind schedule and over budget. "the government" isn't really to blame here, except for being privatized in the first place, its the contractor who is responsible for building the system they're contracted to build, along with the entire concept of privatizing government and governmental functions. can we, the people, finally stand up to this golden toilet and golden hammer bullshit and stop allowing our tax money to be funneled to private corporations who have repeatedly and consistently shown they are incapable of actually doing what they're contracted to do and are only interested in stealing as much of our tax dollars as they can? say "NO!" to privatization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:28PM
The government is to blame for making a contract that allows this.
Government contracts should be of the form "We pay the agreed amount, you deliver the agreed stuff, if you miscalculated and it gets more expensive, it is your problem." Deviations from this scheme may be justified for development of new technology, but not for building stuff with existing technology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:38PM
How far removed are you from people who actually draft, write and read contracts? Do you even *know* people who do this for a living?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:47PM
No business would ever agree to that and nothing would ever get done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:05PM
Those are the kind of contracts I have with my customers, with the caveat that they must meet their milestones/deadlines as well or the price increases.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:44PM
they're milking it for all its worth, always behind schedule and over budget
This is the responsibility of IBM, and all private companies -- to make as much money as possible via moral and immoral, legal and illegal, actions.
But invisible hand yeay!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:44PM
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-secret-startup-saved-healthcare-gov-the-worst-website-in-america/397784/ [theatlantic.com] [theatlantic.com]
https://www.whitehouse.gov/digital/united-states-digital-service [whitehouse.gov] [whitehouse.gov]
https://18f.gsa.gov/ [gsa.gov] [gsa.gov]
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:42PM
The Atlantic piece is a very interesting read. It's amazing how their approach mirrors a lot of the design decisions I along with my team have implemented recently. Of course there is a lot of people here who will come out from under their bridges and yell about Javascript.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:52PM
Tell it to the mighty buzzard, who blames the government for having the problem, despite it being created by a private enterprise.
Probably it is due to inept people at high and low places both at IBM and in the government. Whoever kept signing off on this stuff should refund me my taxes paid to make it happen.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:16PM
i already did. [soylentnews.org] you can't argue with irrational though, all i can do is point out the facts and watch as they're ignored. i expect his reply will contain some non-sequitor or strawman, he'll try to say some bullshit like i suck the government's cock and trust the government implicitly and happy acquiesce to their spying, or that i believe the government can do no wrong, or some other stupid bullshit when i've neither said nor implied anything of the sort.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:36PM
To be fair. "the government" let it drag on for about 8 years more than they should have. After 3 they should have pulled the plug. A system like that you should with a semi competent team be able to crank out something pretty nice in 3 years. 1 form that works is pathetic and no money should have been paid. But it probably was which kept the gravy train going.
My guess is the program is working exactly as designed. To funnel money into IBM from the tax payers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:58PM
These projects are usually a group effort that require coordination and compromise. The "requirements" are usually just guidelines because the devil's in the detail, and the details are not known at contract time. The system probably has to interface with bunches of existing arcane systems with arcane rules. Some of them probably need to be cleaned up or should be cleaned up before using them with the new system. But getting that cleaning done and done right could be a huge sub-project in itself.
IBM probably had to do a lot of guess work about undocumented existing systems just to get their part up and running on time, and new issues were discovered at point.