FBI and INS Bounce Back

EXECUTIVE MEMO

FBI and INS Bounce Back

or the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1995 wasn't too great a year. Last fall the FBI's reputation took a beating as Senate hearings raised questions about the bureau's conduct during the siege of white supremacist Randy Weaver and his family at Ruby Ridge, and the INS struggled to cope with the fallout from a five-part New York Times report that appeared at the end of 1994. So the National Performance Review's recognition of the agencies' efforts to reinvent government in a Dec. 12 ceremony at the Justice Department must have come as a welcome holiday present.

At the awards ceremony, Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick presented employee teams from the FBI's Criminal Justice Division Information Services Division and the INS's Border Crossing Business Process Reengineering Team with Vice President Gore's Hammer Award. The award, a framed, beribboned $6 hammer-a jab at the infamous $600 hammer of the past-recognizes employee teams who have made special contributions to the National Performance Review's reinventing government effort.

Gorelick praised the FBI information services division, which distributes roughly 1.4 million arrest records to law enforcement agencies every month, and the INS border crossing team, which issues short-term border crossing cards for visits to the United States, for speeding each of these processes dramatically. "Now local law enforcement will get arrest record information 80 percent faster and applications for short-term visits from Mexico will be adjudicated within a week instead of up to eight months previously," said Gorelick.