Millions of noncitizens apply annually to enter the United States to live, work, or study. USCIS creates alien files, more commonly called A-files, to document the history of a person’s interaction with USCIS or any DHS entity involved in immigration related actions. USCIS’s Records Operation Handbook (ROH) provides instruction on when and how to create an A-file as well as how to request files and transfer them from one office to another. USCIS maintains A-files on certain individuals, including those who are immigrants or who apply for immigrant status, have become citizens, or have applied for asylum in the United States or refugee status overseas. The A-file is to contain all of the relevant documents of an alien’s interactions with USCIS or other DHS components. For example, the A-file could contain an application for lawful permanent residency and petitions for an alien relative as well as documents related to enforcement actions such as an arrest warrant and the results of any immigration proceedings. While USCIS is the main user of A-files and the official DHS custodian for all of them, other DHS components, such as ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), also use A-files for investigations or other enforcement actions. In addition, information and documents from A-files may be shared with agencies such as the FBI and Department of State. According to senior USCIS officials, USCIS spends about $13 million each year transporting A-files within USCIS and to other components and agencies. USCIS’s long-range plans call for eventually converting paper A-files into electronic files, thus avoiding these transportation costs and making A-files available to multiple users simultaneously. In August 2006, USCIS awarded a 5-year $150 million contract to begin converting A-files. USCIS adjudicates applications for immigration benefits through a network of field offices that include 4 service centers, 33 district offices, and 8 asylum offices. In fiscal year 2005, USCIS’s budget was about $1.8 billion and USCIS adjudicated about 7.5 million applications, of which over 715,000 were applications for naturalization. Naturalization applications are adjudicated at USCIS district offices and require the applicant to, among other things, undergo a security background check, be interviewed by an adjudicator and, demonstrate proficiency in English and a basic understanding of U.S. civics. As part of the adjudications process, adjudicators are to review the applicant’s A-file to identify any information that may disqualify the applicant for naturalization, including information that may indicate potential fraud. Of the over 715,000 naturalization applications adjudicated in fiscal year 2005, USCIS denied about 64,000. All applications for an immigration benefit, including naturalization, are to be filed in the applicant’s A-file. USCIS staff use USCIS’s Central Index System to locate and request the A-file from the last known office location. However, the Central Index System can only identify the office location for the A-file; it does not provide precise information about where in an office an A-file is located. USCIS has NFTS, a system designed to provide more detailed information on the location of an A-file, down to a specific individual or file drawer. USCIS’s predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, began deploying NFTS in November 2002. The system is now deployed to all records units in USCIS district and asylum offices, the USCIS’s Texas Service Center and National Benefits Center, and all ICE and CBP units. Tentative plans call for deploying NFTS to USCIS’s three other service centers by March 2007. NFTS is a Web-based system that is available to anyone in DHS who needs A-files. Users can obtain a user identification code that allows them to request, receive, and transfer A-files. Web-based training on how to use NFTS is available via DHS component intranet sites, including USCIS’s EdVanatage Learning University, ICE’s Virtual University, and the CBP Learning University. In January 2004, USCIS, ICE, and CBP signed a Service Level Agreement in which USCIS agreed to provide A-files to ICE and CBP, and ICE and CBP agreed to follow the ROH. USCIS’s ROH describes the procedures that are to be followed for locating, sending, and receiving A-files. The ROH states that all DHS staff with access to NFTS should use NFTS to, for example, record the creation of an A-file, request A-files from other offices, record when an A-file is sent or transferred out to another office, and immediately record both when an A-file is received and the file’s specific location. USCIS uses the Computer-Linked Application Information Management System (CLAIMS) 4, as the case management and tracking system for naturalization applications. CLAIMS 4 contains information from the naturalization application and other data, such as the results from security background checks and whether or not the application was approved. CLAIMS 4 can also track the status of a request for the A-file, indicating whether the A-file has been requested, received by the district office adjudicating the application, or deemed lost. Figure 1 shows the steps involved in locating A-files for naturalization applications. USCIS’s Adjudicator’s Field Manual provides adjudicators with guidance on naturalization procedures and how to determine whether an applicant meets the eligibility requirements for becoming a citizen. To improve the quality and consistency of all naturalization application processing, USCIS has issued Naturalization Quality Procedures (NQP) guidelines. The NQP provides detailed checklists that clerical staff and adjudicators must complete at each stage of the naturalization process. These completed checklists must be included in an A-file, along with the naturalization application and related documents. The NQP also requires that adjudicators be certified as NQP trained once every 3 years. Our analysis of USCIS data and interviews with USCIS district officials indicate that A-files are missing in a relatively small percentage of naturalization cases but that DHS staff may not always be updating NFTS when files are moved, resulting in delays in locating A-files or in not locating them at all. The CLAIMS 4 database contains a data field that indicates the status of the A-file request, such as whether the file has been received in the district office, requested but not yet received, or that the A-file has been declared lost. According to data from the CLAIMS 4 database, of the approximately 715,000 naturalization applications adjudicated in fiscal year 2005, the district office received the A-file in 685,000 of these cases (about 96 percent), indicating that A-files may not have been available in about 4 percent (about 30,000) of them. However, USCIS officials told us that this CLAIMS 4 data field is an optional field that USCIS staff may complete at various times during the adjudications process or not at all. USCIS officials told us that of the approximately 30,000 naturalization cases where the A-file status indicated something other than received in the district office, A-files were probably available in a number of them. However, because adjudicators may not always update the A-file data field to indicate whether the A-file was eventually received, how many is unknown. In about 13,000 of the approximately 30,000 cases, the A-file status indicator was blank. Data from USCIS’s quality assurance audit of the naturalization program also indicate that the A-files are missing in a relatively small percentage of cases. In fiscal year 2005, the USCIS Performance Management Division sampled 28,575 naturalization applications adjudicated by district offices. Staff found that A-files were available in all but 129 of 28,575 cases sampled, about 0.5 percent. However, because of limitations in its sampling methodology, USCIS said this percentage cannot be projected to the universe of approximately 715,000 naturalization applications completed that year. Although USCIS officials from the 13 district offices we spoke with acknowledged that their offices do not track how often naturalization applications are adjudicated without an A-file, they believed the percentage was low. They estimated the percentage of naturalization applications in fiscal year 2005 that were adjudicated without A-files ranged from less than 1 percent to 10 percent. GAO’s Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government states that information needed to achieve an agency’s objectives should be identified and regularly reported to management. According to USCIS’s Naturalization Quality Procedures, having and reviewing an applicant’s A-file is critical to confirming that the applicant is eligible for naturalization and that no incidents have taken place that would disqualify the applicant from naturalization. In a November 2005 memo, the Acting USCIS Director of Domestic Operations stated that not having an A-file should be a “rare” occurrence, but did not quantify what “rare” meant. Since USCIS deems reviewing the A-file critical to the naturalization adjudications process, the lack of precise data on when an A-file is not available limits USCIS’s ability to determine compliance with this critical step and whether additional actions are necessary to ensure A-files are available when needed. According to USCIS officials, adjudicators sometimes have difficulty locating A-files or cannot find them at all because the locations shown in NFTS are incorrect or not up to date.