A review of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives effort to combat firearms trafficking from southwestern border states into Mexico finds the ATF is inhibited in part by disconnected information technology systems.

In a review of the effort, known as "Project Gunrunner," the Justice Department inspector general says that ATF investigators and ATF enforcement agents make use of separate databases, known as N-Spect and N-Force, respectively. The two databases aren't linked and investigators and enforcement agents don't have access to each other's databases.

So, when an investigator, known as an "industry operations" agent, makes a referral to a criminal enforcement agent, the referral is made through a printed form that's emailed, hand delivered or sent through the postal service.

Field intelligence group personnel  charged with tracking the outcome of referrals say the only way they're able to do so is through manually-updated spreadsheets. One field intelligence group supervisor told auditors that every quarter, he searches N-Force for all "open" referrals, updates the spreadsheet, sends it to the industry operations area supervisor, who in turn updates N-Spect with the current status of a referral.

Auditors also find that enforcement agents don't provide feedback about the utility of referrals. While N-Force is mostly structured information, it does have an unstructured text box. But agents mostly don't enter comments into it, such as why a referral did not meet prosecutorial guidelines or how it could have been improved.

Justice Department auditors also found that a system for tracking gun history, called eTrace, can be and is used by multiple law enforcement agencies. However, officials from one agency can't access the results of another agency's trace requests, the report states.  

The sharing of strategic intelligence between ATF and other federal agencies is also inconsistent and lacking, the report states. ATF's office of strategic intelligence and information has no systematic method to share strategic intelligence with the Drug Enforcement Agency, the report states. Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement also complained to Justice auditors about a lack of ATF intelligence.  

As for strategic information sharing with Mexico, the report says that Mexican officials said they've sought arms trafficking pattern and trends intelligence from ATF, but haven't received it. ATF officials said they have been supplying Mexican officials with intelligence and cited internal coordination problems within the Mexican government, which Justice auditors say they also witnessed. However, auditors say that most of the intelligence given to the Mexican government is tactical rather than strategic, and that some exchanges occur informally, which reduces its utility and availability for ATF Mexican counterparts.

The ATF, in an official response to the audit signed by Deputy Director Kenneth Melson, said it hired in September 2010 a contractor to begin a business process reengineering of its case management and related processes, a reengineering that should be complete by mid fiscal 2012. Thereafter, ATF could solicit an automated solution to resolve the N-Spect and N-Force gap, but the earliest it could be in place would be fiscal 2014.

As for eTrace, modifications underway should allow agencies to share trace data, the ATF said. Melson also wrote that ATF "will continue to evaluate and refine protocols for sharing strategic intelligence."

For more:
 - download the report, I-2011-001 (.pdf)

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