Audit of the Immigration Program
Canadian Consulate General – Seattle
4.3. Client Services
The Mission has not yet established public, advertised processing and response standards for all of its business lines. However, as discussed above, management has been updating service standards and will be disseminating those not already advertised, once they are completed.
Because inquiries on permanent residence are referred to Buffalo, only general information handouts for non-immigrants, produced in house, are available in print format. An examination of the documents revealed that not all of them provide an office name and number at the bottom of the first page, nor is their production date given. These omissions could lead to confusion if new versions were produced and mixed with older ones.
Recommendation
3. The Mission should review the I-drive inventory of form letters in order to provide proper identification on printed information handouts, including serial numbers and publication dates.
Management Response
Management agrees with the recommendation. All immigration forms have been updated to include serial numbers and publication dates.
It should be noted that CAIPS could be improved in the context of the RPC-satellite configuration. Because RPC CAIPS notes and key decision fields are automatically downloaded into a satellite mission’s database when the file is transferred, one cannot differentiate the RPC’s notes from the satellite mission’s notes. As a consequence, when reviewing Seattle’s CAIPS files, the audit team often found it very difficult to tell when the Buffalo RPC had turned the file over to its satellite and when Seattle had begun handling the file. In fact, the exercise brought out the importance of having a system that tells CAIPS readers—particularly remote CAIPS readers—how to identify, not only the author of CAIPS notes, but also the author’s mission. The Field Operations Support System’s related “work in progress” screen partially resolves this problem locally, but it is not available to remote CAIPS users.
Recommendation
4. International Region should consider introducing a new field to allow an automatic generation of the Mission’s ID immediately before the employee’s initials are generated at the end of each entry in CAIPS notes.
Management Response
We have considered the recommendation and believe that introduction of the new field in CAIPS notes is not reasonable at this time.
In order to introduce the new field, programming changes would need to be made. This task would involve a considerable amount of discussion and consultation, in order to reach an agreement on the exact changes to be made. Following discussion and consultation, the actual changes to programming would be initiated. Thorough testing of all programming changes would be required before implementation. Since the majority of CAIPS files are created and finalized at the same mission, the suggested changes to CAIPS would be relevant or “add value” to only a small percentage of CAIPS files— those that are transferred.
The Global Case Management System (GCMS) is a departmental priority at this time. The GCMS team will decide how the author, date and location are captured in the system each time notes are entered. This audit report’s observation and recommendation will be forwarded to the appropriate division of the GCMS team, to ensure that the points raised are considered during design discussions.
- Date Modified:
