Created in 1789, Customs is one of the federal government’s oldest agencies. Customs is responsible for collecting revenue from imports and enforcing customs and related laws. It also processes persons, carriers, cargo, and mail into and out of the United States. In fiscal year 1997, Customs collected about $19 billion in revenues and processed about 18 million import entries; about 128 million vehicles; and about 446 million air, land, and sea passengers entering the country. Customs performs its mission with a workforce of about 19,500 personnel at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and at 20 CMCs, 20 Special Agent-in-Charge offices, and 301 ports of entry around the country. Of these 301 ports, 24 are located along the Southwest border and—through 39 crossing points (such as bridges)—handle both passengers and commercial cargo entering the United States. At the end of fiscal year 1997, Customs had deployed about 28 percent of its inspectors and about 62 percent of its canine enforcement officers at ports along the Southwest border. This compared to about 24 percent of its inspectors and about 50 percent of its canine enforcement officers being deployed at the Southwest border in fiscal year 1992, the earliest year that complete data were available. This deployment represented an increase of about 36 percent in the number of inspectors and about 67 percent in the number of canine enforcement officers at the Southwest border over the fiscal year 1992 level. A major goal of Customs is to prevent the smuggling of drugs into the country by attempting to create an effective drug interdiction, intelligence, and investigation capability that disrupts and dismantles smuggling organizations. The Commissioner of Customs has designated this goal to be the highest priority within Customs. Specifically, as 1 of more than 50 federal agencies involved in the national drug control effort, Customs is responsible for stopping the flow of illegal drugs through the nation’s ports of entry. In addition to routine inspections to search passengers, cargo, and conveyances (these include cars, buses, trucks, aircraft, and marine vessels) for illegal drugs moving through the ports, Customs’ drug interdiction efforts include investigations and the use of contraband enforcement teams and canine enforcement officers. In February 1995, Customs initiated Operation Hard Line along the Southwest border to address drug smuggling, including port running (the practice of racing drug-laden conveyances through a Customs inspection point), and related border violence through increased and intensified inspections, improved facilities, and the use of technology. According to Customs officials, port running had increased in part as a result of enforcement operations conducted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service between the ports of entry along the Southwest border. Customs has expanded its anti-smuggling initiative (called Operation “Gateway”) beyond the Southwest border to the southern tier of the United States to include the Caribbean and Puerto Rico. According to Customs officials, in keeping with the need to perform a multifaceted mission, Customs does not generally allocate inspectors to ports of entry exclusively to perform drug enforcement. Accordingly, while it is the highest priority, drug enforcement is only one of many functions that inspectors are expected to perform when inspecting goods and persons. However, in an effort to enhance its drug enforcement operations, Customs has been using more specialized drug enforcement units, such as contraband enforcement teams, and assigning inspectors to such units on a rotational basis. The Results Act was enacted to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs by establishing a system to set goals for program performance and to measure results. Under the Results Act, executive agencies were to develop, by September 1997, strategic plans in which they defined their missions, established results-oriented goals, and identified the strategies they will use to achieve those goals for the period covering at least fiscal years 1997 through 2002. These plans are to be updated at least every 3 years. Beginning in fiscal year 1999, agencies are also to develop annual performance plans. The Results Act requires that these plans (1) identify annual performance goals and measures for each of an agency’s program activities, (2) discuss the strategies and resources needed to achieve the performance goals, and (3) explain the procedures the agency will use to verify and validate its performance data. Customs’ Strategic Plan for fiscal years 1997 through 2002 established a goal and a number of objectives designed to continue Customs’ multipronged drug enforcement effort to increase the risk of being caught for those smuggling illegal drugs into the country. The plan also included measures, such as the number and amounts of narcotics seizures, to gauge the success of the enforcement efforts and proposed conducting internal evaluations of specific components of the strategy, such as narcotics interdiction. Customs’ fiscal year 1999 Annual Performance Plan detailed performance goals and measures for each of its operational activities. The plan also discussed the strategies and proposed resources that would be utilized to achieve the goals. Customs does not have an agencywide process for annually determining its need for inspectional personnel—such as inspectors and canine enforcement officers—and for allocating these personnel to commercial cargo ports of entry nationwide. Customs officials were not aware of any such process to determine inspectional personnel needs prior to 1995. While Customs has moved in this direction by conducting three assessments to determine its need for additional inspectional personnel since 1995, these assessments (1) focused exclusively on the need for additional personnel to implement its anti-drug smuggling initiatives, such as Operation Hard Line and similar initiatives; (2) were limited to land ports along the Southwest border and certain sea and air ports at risk from drug smuggling; (3) were conducted each year using different assessment and allocation factors; and (4) were conducted with varying degrees of involvement by Customs headquarters and field units. Focusing on only a single aspect of its operations (i.e., countering drug smuggling); not consistently including the key field components (i.e., CMCs and ports) in the decisionmaking process; and using different assessment and allocation factors from year to year could prevent Customs from accurately estimating the need for inspectional personnel and then allocating them to ports. According to Customs officials, they were not aware of any agencywide efforts prior to 1995 to determine the need for additional inspectional personnel at commercial cargo ports of entry. Rather, CMCs (then called districts) requested additional personnel primarily when new ports were established. For example, when the new port at Otay Mesa, California, was established, the Southern California CMC (then called the San Diego District) requested from headquarters, and was allocated, some additional personnel to staff the port. Separately, according to Customs officials, as part of the annual budget request development process, CMCs can also submit requests for inspectional personnel to fill vacancies in existing positions created by attrition. On a broader basis, according to officials at Customs’ Anti-Smuggling Division (ASD), beginning in the late 1980s, Customs redeployed some existing inspectional personnel in response to the increasing workload and drug smuggling threat along the Southwest border. For example, as shown in figures 1 and 2 (see also app. II), prior to the Hard Line buildup, there was an increase in inspectional personnel—inspectors and canine enforcement officers —at Southwest border ports between fiscal years 1993 and 1994. According to ASD officials, this was done in preparation for the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the anticipated increase in related workload. According to these officials, Customs accomplished the pre-Hard Line buildup by reallocating positions that had become vacant through attrition from ports around the country—such as those on the border with Canada—to the Southwest border. Customs’ personnel needs assessment process for fiscal years 1997 through 1999 focused exclusively on its anti-drug smuggling initiatives, namely Operations Hard Line and Gateway. In focusing on only one aspect of its cargo and passenger operations (i.e., countering drug smuggling), Customs is not identifying the need for inspectional personnel for its overall cargo processing operations. According to Customs and Treasury officials, the impetus for the focus of the needs assessements on the anti-smuggling initiatives, beginning with Hard Line, was provided by a June 1995 visit by the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury to ports within the Southern California CMC to observe how Hard Line was being implemented. According to these officials, the Deputy Secretary expressed concern about Hard Line’s implementation, especially about the extensive use of overtime and the apparent lack of results in terms of drug seizures. According to the officials, the Deputy Secretary concluded that the Southwest border ports did not have a sufficient number of inspectors and other personnel to adequately implement Hard Line. As a result, the Deputy Secretary asked Customs officials to review the staffing situation at the Southwest border ports and prepare a proposal for additional staffing and other measures to enhance Hard Line’s implementation. In response to the Deputy Treasury Secretary’s concerns about Operation Hard Line, Customs conducted a needs assessment in 1995 for its fiscal year 1997 budget submission. Specifically, in June 1995, ASD asked the four Customs districts (now called CMCs) along the Southwest border to develop estimates of their inspectional personnel needs. The four districts were San Diego, California (now the Southern California CMC); El Paso, Texas (now the West Texas CMC); Laredo, Texas (now the South Texas CMC); and Nogales, Arizona (now the Arizona CMC). The factors used in this assessment and its results are discussed later in this report. Because they focused on Customs’ anti-smuggling initiatives, the inspectional personnel needs assessments that began in 1995 were accordingly limited to ports along the Southwest border and the southern tier of the United States, and to sea and air ports determined to be at risk from drug smuggling. Also, these assessments focused only on the need for additional personnel at these ports.