DOJ's Civil Rights Division: Opportunities Exist to Improve Its Case Management System and Better Meet Its Reporting Needs

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Civil Rights Division (Division) of the Department of Justice (DOJ) is the primary federal entity charged with enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, religion, and national origin in such areas as voting, employment, housing, public accommodations, the rights of institutionalized persons, and education. Each year, the Division initiates thousands of matters, which may consist of the investigation of an allegation of discrimination, and participates in hundreds of cases to carry out its broad enforcement responsibilities. Over the past 20 years, the Division has used various case management systems to manage its workload. In October 2000, the Division implemented the Interactive Case Management System (ICM) as its official system to track, count, and capture performance measurement information for all matters and cases from their inception to their conclusion and to assist staff in their casework. According to Division documentation, ICM was also designed to serve as a tool for senior management to oversee the work of the Division and to assist senior managers in reporting accurate matter and case data at all levels of the organization, improving accountability, analyzing the Division's performance, and responding to congressional inquiries about the work of the Division. Additionally, ICM was designed to capture and report on the level of effort that attorneys and professionals dedicate to investigations and case-related tasks to help Division managers oversee attorneys' work. Like the Division, each of DOJ's other litigating components has its own case management system to maintain information on its respective enforcement efforts. According to DOJ, the distribution of information across different case management systems makes it difficult and costly to generate department-level reports that support decision making. By linking the various litigating components, the Litigation Case Management System (LCMS) will enable greater and more effective collaboration and information management. In March 2006, DOJ began the LCMS project, intended to link the seven litigating components and facilitate the sharing of standardized information on their enforcement efforts by replacing components' individual case management systems, including ICM. However, according to a DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report issued in March 2009, the implementation of the first stage of LCMS is nearly 2 years behind schedule and overbudget. Moreover, DOJ is now uncertain if LCMS will be implemented in six of the litigating components, including the Division, raising questions as to whether the Division will need to continue to rely on ICM. Because DOJ has such broad responsibilities for enforcing statutes that prohibit discrimination, Congress asked us to review the enforcement efforts of four sections within the Division--the Employment Litigation, Housing and Civil Enforcement, Voting, and Special Litigation sections from fiscal years 2001 through 2007, including how the Division uses its case management system to collect data on these efforts. This report addresses the following questions: (1) To what extent has the Division conducted and documented assessments of ICM's performance since its implementation in fiscal year 2001? (2) What additional data, if any, could be collected using ICM to assist in reporting on the four sections' enforcement efforts?