DG FIA plans agency’s revamping, seeks govt approval

ISLAMABAD: Amidst a growing demand for reformation of state institutions like NAB, FIA and FBR, the director general Federal Investigation Agency has approached the federal government for approval of a “revamping plan” to overhaul the agency to make it efficient, effective and vibrant.

Interior ministry sources told The News that the FIA’s top management has admitted that the agency’s performance has been dismal, which can only be improved through a comprehensive revamping.

This request from one of the leading anti-corruption state agencies has been received by the interior ministry at a time when in the backdrop of PanamaLeaks disclosures, demands for the institution building of NAB, FIA and FBR have amplified. In its “concept paper on revamping of FIA 5-year plan”, the DG FIA admitted that an overview of the FIA’s performance ever since its establishment in 1974 will show discouraging picture.

“Poor quality work with poor quality human resources, use of traditional methods of investigation, poor professionalism, and reluctance to acquire and keep up pace with new technologies have prevented the Agency from reaching its true and envisaged potential,” the plan said, adding that a medium to long term plan to revamp FIA is chalked out in order to transform the FIA into a vibrant, efficient and effective organisation.

The restructuring plan focuses on the following areas:

i) Recruitment and Career Planning: FIA needs to evolve a recruitment strategy for future employment of qualified personnel with better educational qualifications especially for the executive and investigation posts. So far FIA has failed to evolve a credible carrier development path for its personnel. Currently there is neither fixed tenure for any post nor a credible rotation policy. FIA plans to develop a career progression path for its personnel that give them equal opportunities to grow and develop their skills.

ii) Training: With meager resources, a small training facility and a non-professional training staff, the FIA has failed to develop a professional work force. The rapid developments in economic and white collar crime as well as terrorism need a matching response in investigation techniques for which an advanced sustainable model of third party trainings has to be developed besides ungrading the present training infrastructure.

iii) Immigration: FIA needs to focus on developing its immigration human resource while acquiring latest gadgets like document readers, E-printing of stamps and biometric identification of passengers, at all immigration check-posts.

iv) Anti Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling: The recent political turmoil in the Middle East and terrorist attacks in Europe have drastically altered the traditional law enforcement approach towards migrant smuggling and human trafficking. Therefore, a work plan needs to be developed whereby FIA only registers credible cases against agents involved in forged and fake travel documents whereas all fraud cases are referred to the local police.

v) Anti-Corruption: FIA needs to develop an anti-corruption strategy, which should focus on bigger and important cases of corruption in the federal agencies. The FIA would have to stay clear of registering frivolous inquiries. For quality investigations, all investigation officers will be trained besides building up a Case Management System.

vi) Economic Crimes: FIA’s Economic Crime Wing while continuing with its crackdown on Hundi-Hawala will keep focused on quick disposal of suspicious transaction report that it receives from the financial monitoring unit of the State Bank. It will further ensure that anti-money laundering act is added to all under investigation cases. It will also strictly enforce foreign exchange regulations to close all illegal money changers.

vii) Counter Terrorism: With the creation of NACTA and the setting up of provincial CTDs, the counter terrorism role of the FIA needs to be redefined in a manner that it complements the National Action Plan and supports the provincial CTDs.

viii) Integrated Border Management System (IBMS): FIA’s IBMS maintains the database of more than 120m international travelers on arrival/departure at all ports of embarkation and disembarkation. Travel histories are shared with different government agencies. This role of the FIA has been appreciated globally. Now FIA IBMS plans to establish a disaster recovery site as well as upgradation and replacement of required hardware on yearly basis.

ix) NR3C (Cyber Crime): FIA’s cyber crime wing provides state of the art platform for information security audit, vulnerability assessment and penetration testing services for national critical infrastructure. FIA envisages establishment of 10 new cyber crime police stations along with technical upgradation of six existing digital forensic labs and establishment of 10 new forensic labs.

x) Other Federal Offences: The technical wing of the FIA would be reinvigorated with new equipment and training to improve the quality of its operation against producers and sellers of spurious drugs, copy rights violations as well as against commercial and industrial theft of electricity and gas.

xi) Performance and Accountability: FIA has re-designated its discipline branch as Performance and Internal Accountability Branch for setting up of mechanism whereby performance evaluation reports of officers are linked to their performance, complaints and departmental action against them. It will also act as secretariat for the accountability drive against corrupt elements, undertaken with the support of sister intelligence agencies.

xii) Expansion: The manifold increase in its scope and responsibilities has unfortunately not been matched by a commensurate increase in its strength and infrastructure. The Agency needs to prepare a plan for its expansion, both in manpower and infrastructure, for the approval of the federal government.