CBP - COSS Transformation Initiative (CTI)

CTI has a compelling case of quantitative and qualitative benefits and a five-year return on investment (ROI). According to a 2013 Resource Optimization Report to Congress, backed up by a 2020 CBP Cost Management Information System (CMIS) review, by investing in automated scheduling and timekeeping solutions, CBP's Office of Field Operations (OFO) could return 200 CBP Officers and Agricultural Specialists working as Timekeepers/Schedulers to their frontline inspectional and law enforcement duties. This results in an annual cost avoidance of $14M. CBP National Finance Center estimates that the number of non-OFO Timekeepers (~2,000) could be reduced by 15% as employees take on their own timecard responsibilities in webTA, resulting in an annual cost avoidance of $6M. In addition, the retirement of CBP's current mainframe-based timecard and scheduling tool, COSS, enables the Agency to save $5M annually to maintain the system, as well as the ongoing challenges of keeping that system up-to-date with security requirements and legislative changes. Once the CTI Solution is in full operational capability (FY23), CTI expects an annual cost avoidance of ~$25M. Comparing these amounts to CTI's planned lifecycle cost of $111M shows that the ROI could be achieved within 5 years. Additionally, based on the University of Southern California (USC) Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) study on The Impact on the U.S. Economy of Changes in Wait Times At Ports of Entry , for each additional CBP Officer, the estimated economic impact includes a $2 million increase in Gross Domestic Product. This means that CTI's return of 200 CBP Officers and Agricultural Specialists to their frontline inspectional and law enforcement duties will potentially have a $200M plus up to the U.S. economy. From a qualitative perspective, CTI offers a number of compelling benefits. CTI is responsive to a mainframe retirement mandate from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the CBP Office of Information and Technology (OIT), as CTI supports the retirement of the COSS mainframe application. In addition, CTI supports DHS in closing a 2010 DHS Office of Inspector General recommendation that all DHS components be brought on to the DHS timekeeping solution in order to save costs and improve efficiencies. From a CBP mission perspective, CTI also very importantly saves CBP Officers' and Agents' time and allows them to be returned to their mission critical law enforcement and trade facilitation duties. CTI's performance is continuously monitored to demonstrate that the needs of the Agency are being met. The CTI Bi-Annual Survey is used for User Assessment/Evaluation to measure Customer Satisfaction (Operational Metric ID 121480). The Overall Satisfaction rating (how users rate webTA overall) was 4.12 out of a possible 5. In analyzing the Strategic and Business Results, CTI maintains a decrease in the number of hours spent needed to refine USDA Payroll Data so that it matches CBP Timekeeping data prior to posting it in the General Ledger (Operational Metric ID 121430). CTI also maintains the extent to which the System is Available to support CBP Operations (Operational Metric ID 121479).

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