APPENDIX I

SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY

The scope of the audit covered the WAM components and its various data bases. Our audit was designed to determine if WAM accurately identifies workforce needs at POEs, and produces accurate and useful analyses of those workforce needs. The period covered by this audit was October 1, 1994, through November 30, 1995.

We performed the audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards and included tests and procedures necessary to accomplish the objectives. However, we may not be considered by others to be completely independent of INS as required by the standards, because INS has reimbursed us for work that pertained to INS fee-supported programs. The Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Justice (including the OIG, INS, and the Justice Management Division) disagree with INS funding our work and are attempting to have the funds appropriated directly to the OIG. In FY 1996, the OIG received $5 million for fee-related audits, investigations, and inspections. That dollar amount funded approximately 14 percent of the total OIG staff positions. Nonetheless, we consider ourselves independent and do not believe that our reimbursement arrangements with INS have had any effect with regard to our conduct of this audit.

To select a sample of INS ports that used or could use WAM, we compiled a list of 213 POEs from INS's Statistical Yearbooks, FYs 1990 through 1993, and from INS's Augmentation Report dated July 5, 1995. Using this list, we isolated all sites where inspections were reported during FY 1993 ⁸ and matched those against a list of respective POEs. Three distinctive groups of POEs were eliminated from our list for the following reasons:

• six POEs would require travel outside the U.S. or Canada;

• eleven sites reported performing inspections, but there were no inspectors assigned to those respective ports; ⁹ and

• sixty-two sites were land border POEs staffed with four or less inspectors. Therefore, they were considered too small by Headquarters Inspections to utilize WAM.

The result was a modified universe of 134 POEs. We then randomly selected our sample of 41 POEs. The table on the following page provides a detailed listing of the POEs in our sample.

Table 1

8 FY 1994 data were not available until December 1995.

9 INS explained there were some land border POEs which were covered solely by the Border Patrol or U.S. Customs Service.

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