ELIS

We conducted a verification review to determine the adequacy, effectiveness, and timeliness of USCIS' corrective actions to address the seven report recommendations in Better Safeguards Are Needed in USCIS Green Card Issuance, OIG-17-11, November 16, 2016. At the time of our audit fieldwork in spring 2016, USCIS’ efforts to address the errors were inadequate. USCIS conducted a number of efforts to recover the inappropriately issued cards; however, these efforts also were not fully successful. At the time of our audit fieldwork in spring 2016, USCIS’ efforts to address the errors were inadequate. USCIS conducted a number of efforts to recover the inappropriately issued cards; however, these efforts also were not fully successful.

USCIS deployed this capability in April 2016 to improve processing of approximately 84,000 naturalization applications received each month. However, as before, the ELIS capabilities deployed did not include critical functionality necessary for end-to­-end Form N-400 processing. ELIS repeatedly experienced outages and did not always perform as intended. Also, USCIS did not ensure field personnel were adequately trained to use the new system capabilities prior to deployment. Given its focus on meeting established system release dates, USCIS did not fully address our prior report recommendations to improve user support, stakeholder engagement, performance measurement, and testing to ensure ELIS met user needs and improved operations.