Global Asylum
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) manages America's immigration system. Immigration officials review many cases a week, navigating a labyrinth of legal processes to decide who can live in America. Cases can take years to reach a decision, with many applicants waiting in detention.
USCIS hired me to lead a team building a new refugee case management system. I was responsible for design, testing, and managing our team's work. Our goal was to save money and improve security by replacing a mainframe built in the 80s. One year later, we delivered a better process that saved over $10 million a year. Check out this video to learn more about my team.
Applicants would submit paper applications that required a ton of information. To make our digital forms easier to review, we split each case into tabbed pages mirroring steps in the review process. We also added improvements like calculated age values and a history of who modified what on the case.
Officers had to run background checks by typing each applicant's information into several different law enforcement systems. This was frustrating because officers had to factor in gotchas around name variations, legal situations, and specific populations. Our app automated this work using logic and APIs. This part that had taken hours before took seconds now.
We not only met our deadline, but saved officers hours of admin work every week so they could focus on the case. Our app saved USCIS over $10 million a year and received a Director's Cornerstone Award.
