Only 65 percent of agents at Justice Department law enforcement components use deconfliction databases to determine roles and responsibilities during an investigation, according to a Government Accountability Office survey. Underutilization of deconfliction databases contributes to jurisdictional confusion across DOJ components.

Over one-third of agents surveyed at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service reported a disagreement over roles and responsibilities in the past 5 years. Of those, 78 percent admitted the disagreement negatively affected the investigation to some degree, according to a GAO report (.pdf) dated April 2011 but released publically May 9.

Of the 30 percent of agents not using deconfliction databases, some said they preferred interpersonal communication, lacked deconfliction databases in their region or found them unnecessary. Five percent of respondents did not know if they had accessed a deconfliction database in the past 5 years, found report authors. 

Deconfliction databases help coordinate investigations to ensure that agents are not pursuing the same targets. The databases contain information on cross-jurisdiction investigations and facilitate information sharing among agencies. If two components are investigating the same target, an agent can use the database to contact the other component and discuss the case.

"Deconfliction databases are [an] important and proven mechanism of collaboration," asserted Lee J. Lofthus, assistant attorney general for administration at DOJ, in a written response to the report author, Eileen Larence. However, Lofthus provided no information on how DOJ could improve the use of deconfliction databases among agents.

"Although the DOJ components have mechanisms in place to monitor how well components are coordinating, the scope of these mechanisms limits DOJ's ability to identify some problems," wrote Larence. DOJ agreed to GAO's recommendations to better identify and diagnose disagreements and work to limit opportunities for such disagreements by soliciting input from field agents on areas for improvement.

For more:
- see the report GAO-11-314 (.pdf) 

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