Global Asylum
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) manages America's immigration system. Their refugee corps reviews cases of people fleeing persecution and violence, navigating a labyrinth of legal processes to decide who can stay in America. Cases may take years to reach a decision, with many people waiting in detention.
USCIS hired me to build a new refugee case management system. I was responsible for research, testing, and managing our backlog of work. Our goal was to save money and improve security by replacing a mainframe built in the 80s. One year later my team had created a better process that saved over $10 million a year. Check out this video to learn more about my team.
Refugees submit paper applications to USCIS, where contractors type that information into the mainframe. We could save USCIS money by moving to the cloud, but could we create a better process? We sat with officers to find out.
My team conducted observational studies, interviews, and usability tests each week. Officers found it easier to review paper case files because they could scan them faster. To make our digital forms easier to review, we organized fields to mimic the I-589 and I-590 paper forms. We split each case into pages mirroring steps in the adjudication process. We also added improvements like calculated age values and a history of who modified what on the case.
Our users preferred navigating forms quickly via keyboard, so making our app easy to use without a mouse was critical. We used USWDS to create a standard library of accessible components. View a sample of our team design library in Figma.
Officers had to type applicant information into many law enforcement systems for background checks. They did this while remembering rules about specific name variations, situations, and populations. Our app automated this data entry using logic and APIs. Parts of the case process that had taken hours now took seconds.
We not only met our deadline, but saved officers hours of extra work every week so they could focus on the applicants. Our app saved USCIS over $10 million a year and received a Director's Cornerstone Award.
