DEA faulted
on its reports
By Jerry
Seper
Efforts by the Drug Enforcement
Administration to target, disrupt and
dismantle global drug-trafficking
organizations cannot be measured and, as
a result, it remains unclear
whether the agency is adequately achieving its
drug enforcement goals and
objectives, a report said yesterday.
The Justice
Department's Office of Inspector General said the DEA had
failed to meet key
aspects of the government's new performance-reporting
guidelines, which
focus on results instead of procedure, and that the
agency's strategic
objectives were "not quantitative, directly measurable
or
assessment-based."
The report said that while the
DEA established performance indicators,
the agency had not created specific
criteria for its field divisions to
designate organizations as "priority
targets," a key element of its
strategic goal, and had no specific criteria
for reporting on priority
targets that had been disrupted or
dismantled.
It also said the DEA did not have an
effective system to collect,
analyze and report data for all of its
performance indicators; lacked
accurate performance data for one of the five
field divisions included in
the review; and had failed to create "reasonable
realistic performance goals."
In response to the
investigation, the DEA said it is updating its
strategic plan and that the
new strategy will address the shortcomings
listed in the report. According
to the DEA, the new plan will include a
general long-term goal and four
strategic goals with quantitative,
time-specific
objectives.
DEA Administrator Karen Tandy noted in a
memo to Mr. Fine that the
audit contained seven recommendations for action
by the agency and that DEA
supervisors had addressed six of them prior to
the release of the IG report.
"The DEA's actions to
revise its goal and objectives in the new
strategic plan are positive steps
toward improving the DEA's ability to
measure achievement of its critically
important goals and objectives," said
Inspector General Glenn A.
Fine.
The DEA enforces federal laws that relate to
controlled substances,
including identifying and targeting organizations and
people involved in
growing, manufacturing or distributing illicit drugs. It
also is
responsible for taking action to reduce the availability of and
demand for
illicit narcotics on the domestic and international markets and
for
controlling the diversion of legitimately manufactured narcotics into
the
illicit drug traffic.
The White House Office
of Management and Budget said earlier this year
in a performance evaluation
for the 2004 fiscal budget that DEA had been
"unable to demonstrate progress
in reducing the availability of illegal
drugs in the United States." The new
budget called for the smallest
increase for the agency since
1988.