From 1913 until 2002, USDA was responsible for the inspection of plants and animals at U.S. ports of entry. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which combined the inspection activities of the Department of the Treasury’s Customs Service, the Department of Justice’s Immigration and Naturalization Service, and USDA’s APHIS into the newly created DHS. The Secretaries of DHS and of USDA signed a memorandum of agreement in February 2003, agreeing to work cooperatively to implement the relevant provisions of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Under the memorandum of agreement, APHIS’s responsibilities include managing user fees, overseeing agriculture specialists’ training, and providing pest identification services; and CBP’s responsibilities include conducting inspections and related activities. Consistent with the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the agreement, in 2003 approximately 1,500 agriculture specialists who had formerly worked for APHIS became CBP employees. In 2003, CBP established an initiative called “One Face at the Border,” which unified its three missions—customs, immigration, and agricultural inspection—by cross-training CBP customs and immigration officers and agriculture specialists in all three areas. The inspection procedures vary somewhat by the transportation pathway, such as airports, seaports, or land border crossings, but, generally, CBP officers conduct primary inspections, including interviewing passengers, and may refer passengers to agriculture specialists who conduct more detailed secondary inspections, including subsequent interviews of passengers or examination of baggage. Figure 1 shows an example of primary and secondary inspection procedures at an airport. As of April 2012, approximately 2,360 CBP agriculture specialists, including those who formerly worked with APHIS and those hired by CBP, were assigned to about half, or 167 of the 329 U.S. ports of entry. Each U.S. port of entry can include one or more pathway, such as airports, seaports, or land border crossings. For example, the port of Baltimore, Maryland, has an airport and seaport, whereas the port of Dallas, Texas, has just an airport. CBP port directors are responsible for overseeing operations at ports of entry and assigning agriculture specialists to specific port facilities. The ports of entry are organized into 20 district field offices across the United States, and these district offices are headed by CBP field office directors who also serve as liaisons between CBP headquarters and port management. In 2005, APHIS and CBP established a formal assessment process at select ports—known as joint quality assurance reviews—to ensure that ports of entry carry out agricultural inspections in accordance with APHIS’s regulations, policies, and procedures. APHIS and CBP spent about $33,000 conducting eight such reviews in 2011, and, according to CBP officials, the reviews focus on ports that are considered to be high risk for agriculture. The Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990, as amended, authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to set and collect user fees for AQI services provided in connection with the arrival, at a port in the customs territory of the United States, of commercial vessels, commercial trucks, commercial railroad cars, commercial aircraft, and international passengers. The Secretary subsequently delegated this authority to APHIS. The fees are paid either directly by shipping companies or indirectly by air passengers through fees on tickets. CBP collects user fees for commercial vessels and trucks and deposits the collections into APHIS’s user fees account. APHIS collects all other user fees and periodically transfers a pre-agreed portion of the total collections to CBP to support CBP’s agriculture-related operations. APHIS has revised the AQI user fees several times since the act was passed. For example, through the rulemaking process, APHIS increased the user fees in November 1999 and, in January 2003, extended the adjusted fees indefinitely. In August 2006, APHIS published a final rule affirming a December 2004 interim rule that increased user fees again. We have previously reported on how the fees are set, collected, and distributed, and the benefits and challenges of this process to agencies and stakeholders, including the implications of consolidating these fees under the authority of DHS. DHS and USDA took steps to implement all seven recommendations we made in our May 2006 report, but they faced challenges fully implementing four of them. DHS and USDA have implemented our recommendations to (1) improve information-sharing, (2) undertake a full review of DHS’s financial management system for the AQI program, and (3) remove barriers to timely and accurate AQI user fee transfers from USDA to DHS. Improve information-sharing. In our May 2006 report,that DHS and USDA ensure that they more effectively share urgent alerts and other information essential to safeguarding U.S. agriculture and that they transmit such information to agriculture specialists at the ports. At that time, we reported that agriculture specialists were not consistently receiving notifications of changes to inspection procedures or policies and urgent alerts from APHIS—notices of emerging concerns about foreign pests and diseases––in a timely manner. In response to our recommendation, in 2007, DHS established the position of Deputy Executive Director for Agriculture Operational Oversight to serve as a we recommended primary point of contact for coordination among CBP, APHIS, and AQI stakeholders, such as state departments of agriculture, who would be largely responsible for eradicating foreign pests. In addition, CBP implemented a policy to disseminate urgent agriculture alerts to its field offices within 24 hours of receipt, and the alerts are then disseminated to agriculture specialists at the ports. These alerts, as well as any changes in inspection procedures or policies, are also available on the AQI program’s intranet site. Our survey results indicate that an estimated 83 percent of the agriculture specialists and supervisors at CBP found that information regarding agriculture regulatory changes was delivered in a timely manner either always or most of the time. Our survey results also indicate that an estimated 4 percent of agriculture specialists and supervisors at CBP believe that the timeliness of information provided to agriculture specialists is a very major challenge, while an estimated 57 percent believe it is only a minor challenge or not a challenge. Review DHS’s financial management system. In 2006, we recommended that DHS undertake a full review of its financial management systems, policies, and procedures for the AQI program to ensure financial accountability for funds allocated for agricultural quarantine inspections. GAO-06-644. spent on agriculture activities and the associated costs. Since we last reported, CBP added agriculture-specific activity codes to its financial management system, which, according to CBP officials, allows CBP to provide APHIS with actual costs related to user fees. In addition, CBP issued guidance to clarify how employees should account for activities that are simultaneously related to immigration, customs, and agriculture activities so that this information could be tracked for the purpose of collecting AQI user fees. According to APHIS and CBP officials, the new activity codes and guidance allow CBP to accurately report its costs by user fee type to APHIS and ensure financial accountability for funds allocated to AQI user fees. Accurately transfer user fees. In 2006, we recommended that USDA take steps to assess and remove barriers to the timely and accurate transfer of AQI user fees to DHS. At that time, transfers of user fees from USDA’s APHIS to DHS’s CBP were often delayed and their amounts were sometimes less than CBP expected, which adversely affected agricultural inspection activities. For example, in 2006, we reported that during fiscal years 2004 and 2005, CBP frequently did not receive the transfers at the time specified or for the agreed upon amount, causing some ports to reduce spending for supplies or to delay hiring or purchasing equipment. Since that time, APHIS and CBP have fully implemented a user fee transfer agreement that allows for a bimonthly transfer schedule that better accommodates the inflow of AQI user fee funds. This new user fee agreement also created chief budget liaisons at APHIS and CBP and provides for meetings at least 4 times a fiscal year to discuss AQI funding. Our analysis of transfer records provided by APHIS shows that, from fiscal year 2006 through 2011, 34 of the 36 scheduled user fee transfers were made in accordance with the new, bimonthly transfer schedule. During that time, six scheduled transfers were less than the scheduled amount, and, for each, APHIS made up the difference either by adding an unscheduled transfer or by adding the difference to the next scheduled transfer. APHIS and CBP officials told us that transfers have been more timely and accurate since the changes were implemented. DHS and USDA faced challenges in fully implementing our recommendations to (1) adopt meaningful performance measures, (2) establish a national risk-based staffing model, (3) improve the agriculture canine program, and (4) revise user fees to cover AQI program costs. In 2006, we recommended that DHS and USDA adopt meaningful performance measures for assessing the AQI program’s effectiveness at intercepting foreign pests and disease on agricultural materials entering the country by all pathways and posing a risk to U.S. agriculture. At that time, CBP had not adopted performance measures that took into account the agency’s expanded mission or considered all pathways by which prohibited agriculture items or foreign pests may enter the country. In response to our recommendation, in 2007, APHIS and CBP created a joint task force that expanded existing performance measures to more pathways, including passengers’ baggage, pedestrians, and vehicles, as well as some cargo pathways. These performance measures provide information about the amount of prohibited agriculture items expected to be found in specific pathways during inspections, which can then be compared with data on the actual amount found.