CBP Provides Integrity Programs to Mitigate Corruption, Aims to Ensure Officers are Fully Trained
CBP has made significant steps towards ensuring officers are fully trained, in addition to providing integrity-related programs to prevent attempted corruption of their workforce, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in reports released Aug. 28. CBP has closed three out of four GAO recommendations “aimed at strengthening officer training,” which came as a response to a December 2011 report indicating that CBP had revised its training program but could do more to “identify and address incumbent officer training needs.” The report said that CBP could be “evaluating the effectiveness of training and conducting a comprehensive assessment of the results of covert tests of CBP’s inspection processes.” GAO recommendations included developing a training needs assessment to identify any existing skills gaps, and establishing specific roles and responsibilities for training and related oversight.
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Due to the risk of corruption by drug-trafficking organizations within the CBP workforce, GAO said that CBP has also implemented integrity-related programs to prevent acts like bribery in exchange for “allowing contraband or inadmissible aliens into the country. However, GAO said that CBP still has not completed a comprehensive integrity strategy “as called for in its Fiscal Year 2009-2014 Strategic Plan,” and faces challenges in managing the integrity programs. Both GAO and the Department of Homeland Security recommended that CBP set “target timelines for completing and implementing” this strategy in order to “enhance CBP efforts to mitigate the risk of corruption.”
The GAO report on recommendations aimed at ensuring officers are fully trained is (here).
The GAO report on integrity-related programs is (here).