The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reduced the amount of time the public has to spend accessing DHS services by 20 million hours annually.
The DHS made the announcement May 30 that it had met the "goal set by Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas in 2022 to build a more equitable and accessible experience for DHS customers." Mayorkas implemented the DHS Burden Reduction Initiative (BRI) in response to President Joe Biden's Executive Order 14058, "Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government," the DHS states in the news release.
"As the Department that interacts more frequently on a daily basis with the American public than any other federal agency or department," DHS states in the release, "the achievement announced today will have a tremendous impact on the safety, security, and well-being of residents across the country."
The DHS reached its goal by streamlining online paperwork processes, including through the use of automatic renewals and short forms; enabling online submission of forms where appropriate; and pre-filling forms and reusing data where applicable, according to the release.
Initiatives by DHS offices include measures taken by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA to improve the credentialing process for transportation workers by allowing transportation to renew their identification credentials online instead of in-person and reducing renewal fees, the release reports.
By allowing predictive-typing features and online submissions instead of using stand-alone software, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) saved users of the National Fire Incident Reporting System a collective 2.81 million hours, according to the release.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection simplified the process of transporting cargo into the U.S. by ocean vessels by transitioning to the use of pre-populated data and the reuse of existing data when completing the necessary actions. The changes have reduced the time needed to submit required information to five minutes, down from the up-to three hours the process previously took.
The application process for exchange visitors and students has been reduced, to as low as five minutes for certain groups, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transitioned to pre-filling fields, sharing data between related collections, facilitating electronic information sharing/automatic fee transfers, and building responsive, mobile-friendly experiences, according to the release.
“Improving the customer experience is one of the Department's top priorities," said Mayorkas said in the release.
"Through the tremendous talent and dedication of our personnel, we have made great strides in doing so," he said. "There is much more work to be done. We will continue to find new ways to modernize services and harness technology to improve efficiency, equity, and accessibility in everything that we do.”
