DOS OIG Visa Services Inspection Report

"Key Findings -

- The Bureau of Consular Affairs’ Visa Services Directorate is accomplishing its complex, challenging, and critical mission. It has demonstrated that it can successfully realize the President’s goal of facilitating travel to the United States while maintaining border security. However, the directorate needs to tackle important management challenges to sustain its performance and improve efficiency.

- Mounting visa demand and changes to immigration law have driven major changes in staffing, technology, and mission, but the directorate has adapted its organizational structure only incrementally. Lagging structural change contributes to inefficiency, resources not matched to operational needs, and low morale among staff.

- Delays responding to public inquiries about immigrant and nonimmigrant visas reflect poorly on the Bureau of Consular Affairs and the Department of State.

- The directorate generally manages its contracts worth $350 million capably and complies with Foreign Affairs Manual and Federal acquisitions regulations. Nonetheless, the team identified several areas for improvement.

- Systems outages, a backlog of thousands of requests to make changes to the visa systems, and inability to monitor systems performance put at risk fundamental operations in the directorate." - DOS, Oct. 2014.