FOIA Request and Case Management at USCIS

Background

In 2017 I was employed by Fjord (a design agency acquired by global consulting company Accenture Federal) and assigned to the United State Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS, a part of the Department of Homeland Security) team with the objective to digitize the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request and case management process from end-to-end, so that requesters can receive documents digitally, eliminating the time and expense associated with receiving requests by mail by creating a tool called FIRST (aka Freedom of Information Act Immigration Records System).

By FOIA, any immigrant into the United States has a legal right to obtain their own immigration data. They can file a "FOIA request" by mail, fax, or email (typically through a lawyer due to the complicated legal-ese). These users (aka "requestors") typically received their documents via CD-ROM sent by air mail approx. 6 months after requesting.

WHo WAs INvolved

Project Team

1 Project Manager, 3 UX Designers (including me), 1 Visual Designer, 1 Design Manager

External Team

We had to partner with a software engineering team who works for a different organization and was also hired by our client, the client project owners were the National Records Center (NRC), and we also partnered with the Office for Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC of the Department of Homeland Security) to implement our solutions into their framework

Process

The challenges were numerous, including working with stakeholders in different time zones, adapting to waterfall processes, and dealing with technical constraints imposed by security requirements. Despite joining the project after it had already begun, I quickly assumed a leadership role and became a subject matter expert.

My first task was to design a solution for the complex FOIA reporting requirements. To start I was given a list of about 100 different types of reports without any additional context. I had to form a lot of connections with different members of the NRC to understand what the output of these reports looked like, what they were being used for, how they relate to other reports, and identify patterns and form them into groups. I organized a workshop with our clients in Washington, DC to understand their needs and requirements better. Through various exercises, such as Ecology Mapping, Personal Network Analysis, User Journeys, and Parallel Designs we gathered crucial insights and gained their confidence in our path towards a solution.

Using this information, I created a structured sitemap for the reporting tool, eliminating data duplication and inefficiency. The new reporting tool allowed users to see a dashboard of daily and monthly information as well set filters and generate multiple reports from a single source, improving efficiency and scalability which had never been done before.

Results

The launch of FIRST led to a significant reduction in FOIA request processing time, decreasing it from 6 months to just 2 weeks. This transformation marked a substantial improvement in the efficiency of USCIS's FOIA process, benefitting requesters and USCIS alike.

The success of this project earned us a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with USCIS to address other challenges within the organization.

Read the official press releases about FIRST:

Key Takeaways

Effective collaboration and communication can overcome complex challenges.
Understanding the intricacies of the client's operations is crucial for successful design.
Testing with real users in their work environment is invaluable for validation.
Digitizing processes can have a profound impact on efficiency and customer experience.