APPLICATION SERVICES

Client and Project

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have responsibility for managing the sensitive assets they use to fulfill their missions. These include firearms, armor, and credentials. Managing these assets required the agents to bring assault rifles and body armor into the office for inventory each year. Inventories were managed with a web-based tool and the process consumed thousands of agents’ staff hours. This administrative necessity competed with delivering the enforcement and security tasks assigned to the agents.

Significance

Other priorities often overshadow initiatives to streamline administrative functions. However, the aggregate costs or impact of administrative burden on service delivery is frequently significant. For example, consider the impact of hundreds of ICE and CBP agents who are required to provide evidence they have possession of the assigned assets on an annual basis―compounded by manual error correction and data reconciliation. The agents sought a solution that would minimize the reporting burden, and DHS headquarters sought a solution that would increase accuracy and replace the hours spent on administrative functions with hours performing core mission functions. This scenario is common across many organizations.

BRMi’s Impact

BRMi evaluated the asset management function and developed a streamlined approach supported by a hybrid mobile application (FACTS) for Android and iOS devices. We used mobile web technologies Ionic and Cordova. As a pilot deployed to ICE and CBP, the app enabled agents to electronically submit inventories of their sensitive assets using a smartphone. Agents using the app now spend considerably less time on this administrative function and fewer headquarters staff are needed to correct errors and match asset inventory records, saving thousands of hours of staff time each year.