Report Contents
Report Terms
Report Recommendations
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should implement in the Visa Services Directorate a policy planning process to identify and develop alternative policy and program approaches to emerging issues.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs, in coordination with the Bureau of Human Resources, should reorganize the Visa Services Directorate to align responsibilities with mission requirements, create an appropriate mix of staff and skills, and assign supervisors a manageable number of employees.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should update all the position descriptions in the Visa Services Directorate to reflect current responsibilities.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs, in coordination with the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, should develop and adhere to service standards for providing and analyzing information on human rights ineligibility cases, train subject matter experts, and report any impediments to fulfilling its obligations to the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights and the Under Secretary for Management.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should establish a system to create, maintain, and consult records of the opinions it renders in its Visa Services Directorate, Advisory Opinions Division.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should revise its plan to transfer nonimmigrant visa public inquiries from the Visa Services Directorate in Washington to the National Visa Center and assign a resident subject matter expert to the National Visa Center as a resource for the telephone and written inquiries units.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs, in coordination with the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, should complete a memorandum of understanding governing visa operations at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
The U.S. Mission to the United Nations, in coordination with the Bureau of Consular Affairs, should adopt and publish a visa referral policy.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should clear with all bureau stakeholders new standard operating procedures for evaluating exchange visitor foreign residence requirement waivers.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should include contract monitoring responsibilities in the work requirements of government technical monitors, as well as in all new employee orientation materials, and publish the orientation materials on its intranet site.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should designate one or more employees to represent the needs of the Kentucky Consular Center and National Visa Center to all bureauwide systems liaison, systems review, and new systems planning meetings.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should establish scheduled systems outage periods for maintenance of consular systems and post the schedule on the Office of Consular Systems and Technology Web site.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should replace the local file servers, print server, independent name check system servers, and associated parser at the Kentucky Consular Center.
The Bureau of Information Resource Management, in coordination with the Bureau of Consular Affairs, should provide classified storage space or hardware to store the Coordination Division’s classified electronic visa files.
The Bureau of Consular Affairs should establish and implement a process to approve all software through its systems development life cycle process and the Department’s Information Technology Configuration Control Board process.