INS database problems thwart FBI counterterrorism work

Computerworld - The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has lost track of nearly half of all aliens that the FBI would like to question about their knowledge of terrorist activities. The culprit: a failure of the INS to maintain an integrated, updated database system.
That's the assessment of the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, that was documented in a report released Nov. 22.
According to the report, the INS has been unable to locate 1,851, or 45%, of the 4,112 aliens whom the FBI and the government's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force want to interview. The INS has also lost track of 4,334 aliens from countries where al-Qaeda is known to operate, who have been ordered to leave the U.S.
The INS's inability to keep track of the current locations and various address changes of nonimmigrant aliens stems from the agency's use of more than 16 database systems to capture the data.
"INS does not update all databases that contain alien address information and does not have the ability to update address information in NIIS," the Nonimmigrant Information System, said the GAO report. The NIIS is an automated database that contains address and identity information on nonimmigrants who were inspected upon their entry into the U.S. The GAO also found problems with INS databases in distinguishing among aliens with the same names.
In a written response to the report, Robert Diegelman, acting assistant attorney general for administration at the U.S. Department of Justice, under which the INS operates, said the INS has established an address task force to study ways to improve the system, including the creation of a centralized and searchable alien address repository.
Sanjay Poonen, vice president of marketing and a homeland security analyst at Informatica Corp., a Redwood City, Calif.-based data integration and business intelligence software developer, said the problems at the INS are indicative of a much larger challenge facing the government.
"Goal No. 1 is tearing down the stovepipes that exist" throughout agencies such as the INS, the U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Coast Guard, said Poonen, referring to the cultural and political obstacles that exist within different agencies. "It's not just about tracking an alien as he or she comes into the country; it's also about being able to track that person throughout state and local governments and even into the private sector."
According to Poonen, federal CIOs "don't need to start from scratch."
"It's tearing down bureaucracies and fiefdoms more than technology," he said. "If you look at our software,