Return to the USDOJ/OIG Home Page
Return to the Table of Contents

Federal Bureau of Investigation Casework and Human Resource Allocation

Report No. 03-37
September 2003
Office of the Inspector General


REDACTED AND UNCLASSIFIED

Chapter 6: Field Office Agent Resource Specialization

We conducted an analysis of agent and support resource utilization in each of the FBI’s 56 field offices to determine the predominant programs for each office.  To do so, we calculated agent and support resource utilization46 in each field office, by program, for each fiscal year of our review period, October 1, 1995, through June 1, 2002.47  We defined the “predominant” program as the program that utilized the most agent resources for the most fiscal years during the sample timeframe.

For many field offices, the predominant program varied from year to year.  For example, in the seven years from FY 1996 through June 2002, the Chicago Field Office utilized the largest number of its agent resources in the Violent Crimes and Major Offenders program (VCMO) for one fiscal year (1996), the National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) for one fiscal year (2002), and White Collar Crime (WCC) program for five years.  Thus, the predominant program for Chicago agents is WCC.

EXHIBIT 6-1
SPECIAL AGENT UTILIZATION
CHICAGO FIELD OFFICE
CLASSIFIED
INFORMATION
REDACTED
Source:  FBI TURK System

The Chicago Field Office utilized its support resources differently than its agent resources.  As shown in the following graph, Chicago utilized most of its support resources in NFIP by a large margin, whereas the WCC program is either second or third in terms of resource usage.  This reflects the overall trend of support in NFIP being greater than in all other programs combined (as shown in Exhibit 3-5).

EXHIBIT 6-2
SUPPORT PERSONNEL UTILIZATION
CHICAGO FIELD OFFICE
CLASSIFIED
INFORMATION
REDACTED
Source:  FBI TURK System

Unlike Chicago, agent resource trends in some field offices were very clear and remained consistent throughout the duration of our review period.  For example, in the El Paso Field Office, the largest number of agent resources were utilized in the Organized Crime/Drugs program (OC/D) for each of the seven fiscal years.

EXHIBIT 6-3
SPECIAL AGENT UTILIZATION
EL PASO FIELD OFFICE
CLASSIFIED
INFORMATION
REDACTED
Source:  FBI TURK System

Our review also revealed that the majority of other field offices utilized most of their agent resources in NFIP in FY 2002.  This correlates to the FBI’s shift in workload in the wake of 9/11.  In El Paso, however, although agent usage in NFIP moved ahead of both the Violent Crimes and Major Offenders and White Collar Crime programs in FY 2002, it remained below that of OC/D.

Only 10 other field offices utilized more of their agent resources in programs other than NFIP in FY 2002:  Albuquerque, Anchorage, Cleveland, Jackson, Minneapolis, Mobile, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and San Juan.  Each of these, except Salt Lake City, continued to expend more of its agent resources in that field office’s predominant program from FY 1996 through FY 2001.  As the lone exception, Salt Lake City expended the majority of its agent resources in the Domestic Terrorism program due to the 2002 Winter Olympics.  The following list groups the FBI field offices by predominant program.

EXHIBIT 6-4
Predominant Field Office Agent Programs48
October 1, 1995 through June 1, 2002
CLASSIFIED
INFORMATION
REDACTED
Source:  FBI TURK System

Only seven field offices experienced no change in their predominant agent programs during the timeframe we reviewed.  These offices are printed in blue and italicized in Exhibit 6-4.  We also have incorporated the information from the previous list onto the following map, which geographically illustrates the jurisdictional boundaries of each FBI field office. As illustrated on Exhibit 6-5, although NFIP is a tier one program in the FBI’s strategic plan, only four field offices allocated enough agent resources to make it their predominant program.

EXHIBIT 6-5
PREDOMINANT PROGRAMS WORKED IN FBI FIELD OFFICES
FY 1996 – JUNE 2002
CLASSIFIED
INFORMATION
REDACTED
Source:  FBI TURK System, FBI Field Office Map, and OIG analysis.

Footnotes
  1. This is calculated using Average On Board (AOB), as previously defined.
  1. As part of this analysis, we created resource utilization graphs by criminal investigative program for both agent and support personnel for each of the FBI's field offices. The FBI considers the data presented in the graphs to be classified information. Therefore, all 112 graphs were provided to the FBI under separate cover.
  1. None of the other FBI criminal investigative programs (Civil Rights, Domestic Terrorism, or National Infrastructure Protection/Computer Intrusion) were predominant for any of the 56 field offices.

REDACTED AND UNCLASSIFIED