Embassy New Delhi, India and Constituent Posts - OIG - US ...

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Therefore, Hyderabad would be a good candidate for being the pilot post in India (as part of
India 2020) for moving to a system of shift work.
The noise in the consular work area in Hyderabad is cacophonous. In the collective
memory of OIG team members, it was the worst they had ever heard. The perils of working in a
palace are that the high-ceilinged rooms are not built for acoustics. The consular managers
ordered headphones for employees, but they received handsets instead. A couple of officers had
headphones. The OIG team members witnessed an experiment in which visa applicants were
asked whether the headphones or the microphones worked best. The headphones won easily.
Wearing headphones would help the employees as well as the applicants deal with the ambient
noise. In addition, both the employees and the applicants would benefit from soundproof
windows.
Recommendation 35: Embassy New Delhi, in coordination with the Bureau of Consular
Affairs, should obtain headphones for all employees who use the consular windows in Consulate
General Hyderabad. (Action: Embassy New Delhi, in coordination with CA)
Recommendation 36: Embassy New Delhi, in coordination with the Bureau of Consular Affairs
and the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, should install sound-proofing on both sides of
the consular windows in Consulate General Hyderabad. (Action: Embassy New Delhi, in
coordination with CA and OBO)
Innovative Practice: Barcoding Commonly Used Sentences for Officers’ Adjudication
Notes
Issue: Consular officers write notes from their visa interviews into the nonimmigrant visa
system. These notes can be read by authorized personnel, such as Customs and Border Patrol
officers at U.S. ports of entry. The notes should not be in short-hand, because they need to be
legible to third parties. As so many cases have similar issues, consular officers find that they
often write the same sentences repeatedly. For example, officers are required to note whether
they have handed a visa applicant who will be working in the United States the information on
what their labor rights will be and that the applicant understands his or her rights under the law.
Response: Consular managers in Hyderabad created a system in which commonly used
sentences or phrases have been barcoded. Those barcodes, with the phrase written underneath the
barcode, are on sheets of paper that the officers keep by their windows. When the officer needs
to use such a sentence, the officer wands the barcode and the sentence is instantly transferred to
the officer’s case notes in the computer system.
Result: This innovation not only saves considerable time for the officers, but it also allows them
to keep their focus on the applicants and the applicants’ responses in the interviews.
Consular managers in Hyderabad have also come up with an innovative program in
which LE staff members present training sessions on topics about local culture. Even LE staff
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