USCIS Regional Media Manager Marie Therese Sebrechts said the agency is undertaking an agency-wide effort to move immigration services from a paper-based model to an electronic environment.
“This effort, known as USCIS Transformation, is a multi-year effort,” she said.
She told Variety that their goal is to deliver a simplified, web-based system for benefit seekers to submit and track their applications.
She also said the idea of the new, account-based system will provide customers with better, faster and more accurate services — and also to enhance USCIS’s ability to process cases with greater consistency, security and timeliness. “These are the goals of transforming.”
Asked if the transformation of the USCIS is part of the efforts to reduce operating costs, Sebrechts said, “It is not being undertaken specifically as a cost-savings measure but rather to revolutionize the way we do business.”
USCIS Transformation will be deployed in multiple phases to cover all benefit types in the immigration lifecycle. Select nonimmigrant benefit types will be deployed beginning by the end of 2011, extending to other nonimmigrant benefit types in 2012 and then immigrant benefit types, humanitarian benefit types and citizenship benefits.
According to the rule published in the Federal Register which will take effect on Nov. 28 this year, it will allow the USCIS to fully implement The Government Paperwork Elimination Act that called for federal agencies to use, when possible, electronic forms, electronic filing, and electronic submissions to conduct agency business with the public.
It further stated that the multi-year transformation of the agency is looking forward to realizing its objectives and goals of enhanced national security, integrity of filings, public service, and operational efficiency.
The process also involves the use of modern electronic audit and investigative method that will easily identify potential frauds and other risks.
The USCIS welcomes comments from the public on or before Oct. 28, 2011.
Comments can be emailed to [email protected] and indicate DHS docket number USCIS-2009-0022.
For a copy of the Immigration Benefits Business Transformation, Increment 1, go to www.regulations.gov.
