How REI Systems Helped the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services Modernize ELIS
The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that administers the country’s naturalization and immigration system. USCIS is responsible for maintaining immigration case backlogs and improving efficiency. USCIS relies on the Electronic Immigration System (ELIS), a custom case management solution that processes 80% of the agency’s immigration applications. From work authorization and visas to naturalization, asylum, and citizenship, ELIS is the agency’s first-ever online immigration system created to modernize the filing and adjudication of immigration benefits.
ELIS serves ~38,000 users across 1,200+ offices worldwide, accounting for 80% of the agency’s immigration case workload
Prior to ELIS, USCIS relied on paper-based processes and siloed legacy systems requiring multiple forms and direct mail handling – resulting in long waiting periods for applications to reach USCIS offices and little visibility into application statuses. This slow, error-prone processing sometimes resulted in inaccurate decisions. Furthermore, these archaic systems and applications all needed continuous updates. Therefore, to keep up with the growing demand for timely and efficient application accessibility for immigration, USCIS developed ELIS to continuously improve, elevate, streamline, and revise its processes.
For nearly 20 years, REI Systems (REI) has partnered with DHS to honor its mission of safeguarding the American people. It has supported USCIS since 2019 across three Outcome-Based Delivery and Development Operations Services (ODOS) contracts: ODOS, ODOS II Bridge, and ODOS III. We combined leading-edge business acumen, modern technologies and applications, and a Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/ CD) pipeline that optimizes Agile DevSecOps workflows. We applied our award-winning Mindful Modernization™ approach to holistically align our government customers’ strategic objectives to measurable outcomes through people, processes, and technology.
CHALLENGE: OPTIMIZE PERFORMANCE FOR END USERS WHILE FUTURE PROOFING ELIS
USCIS seeks to secure America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to its applicants, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of ELIS. With so many mission-critical processes on the line, USCIS knew that moving to the cloud was the best way to keep up with the continual need for modernizing and enhancing ELIS – capabilities they could only find in the AWS Cloud. However, they also knew that to streamline workflows and improve customer experiences (CX) without disturbing agency operations, they would need help.
The agency faced extraordinarily complex and changing laws and regulations in an evolving context of global immigration patterns and events. These complexities have presented a seemingly insurmountable IT challenge for USCIS — several large system integrators worked to develop comprehensive solutions that were never successfully implemented.
Fortunately, there was a way to remain current with a more reliable solution to reduce the amount of time spent by adjudicators on each case and decrease lead times (wait) experienced by applicants. Although the move to AWS Cloud improved the availability and scalability of services, USCIS decided to modernize its immigration application processing to:
Increase accurate information available to adjudicators
Reduce backlog of immigration cases by streamlining workflows and improving customer experience (CX) for adjudicators
Optimize performance and scalability by transforming USCIS paper-based processes to a common digital platform
Reduce expensive system downtimes through autonomous microservices
Improve system security
However, to reap those benefits, USCIS first had to switch strategies and adopt an Agile approach reliant on a multi-vendor environment to enhance ELIS incrementally. The agency held a coding challenge and selected REI as a partner following our exceptional performance, engineering talent, and expertise in Agile DevSecOps environments.
USCIS held REI and several other vendors accountable to gain complementary skills and increase its chances of success – assigning more work to the vendors that perform well and succeed and phasing out those that did not. To mitigate risk, REI helped USCIS by engaging with scrum-of-scrums across Agile teams to identify gaps, overlaps, and potential conflicts early, set clear plans and responsibilities for resolution, and evaluate what worked during retrospectives.
SOLUTION: MINDFUL MODERNIZATION™ STREAMLINED IMMIGRATION APPLICATION PROCESSING AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES
REI’s Agile, DevSecOps, and CX experts are passionate about solving complex challenges. We delivered value and flexibility through containerized and microservices-based architectures, breaking down a single application into loosely coupled and independently deployable smaller components or services. Enabling USCIS ELIS to innovate faster by creating a CI/CD software development pipeline using leading-edge technologies, tools, and knowledge.
We delivered system features through an iterative cycle, including platform engineering, user research, prototype design and development, usability, and beta testing. At the same time, we were improving the agency’s ability to see data assets across all enterprise services through a single system that provided better visibility and transparency into immigration process flows and bottlenecks. Doing so created a consistent data model for benefits processed and an enterprise schema for data consumption and reporting.
Our proficiency with Agile Kanban, Application Modernization, and Case Management Systems helps us foresee obstacles. Harnessing the prowess of REI’s Mindful Modernization™ to ensure the long-term sustainability and success of USCIS ELIS, we made it our mission to provide critical technical support, fill knowledge gaps, and work collaboratively within a multi-vendor environment to overcome those challenges to get the job done fast.
Our solution foundation incorporates:
| CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION/CONTINUOUS DELIVERY Streamlines vendor innovation approaches and feedback from users into one collaborative solution to quickly test, deploy, and replace application coding before deployment |
| CLOUD-NATIVE HOSTING Accelerates developer productivity, simplifies operations, and builds security and compliance into software delivery processes |
| MICROSERVICES Composes a single application into many loosely coupled and independently deployable smaller services |
| HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN Validates solution concepts and execution tactics with real-time insights from agency staff and users |
| LOWER O&M COSTS Increases system lifespans, lowers risk of breakdowns, increases efficiency, and decreases unplanned downtime |
MISSION IMPACT: DIGITAL SOLUTIONS PROVIDE POSITIVE APPLICANT AND EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCES
When USCIS called REI, the agency was looking for partners who could help to build an Agile digital solution that would meet its need to decrease adjudication wait times for applicants, digitize paper-based benefit types, streamline staff workflows, and provide adjudication consistency.
As an example of one of the mission impacts REI achieved, we implemented a new fee structure, which demanded a new microservice within a compressed timeline of 6 weeks. We used a secure, scalable, containerized, and microservice-based architecture to implement this feature, demonstrating our ability to improve speed to market while minimizing expensive system downtimes.
We also helped create a CI/CD pipeline to support a containerized and microservices-based architecture for ELIS that enabled the organization to decommission the Legacy Naturalization Application Casework System and the Legacy Electronic Filing System, along with 12 other systems.
The resulting solution reduced workload within immigrant, citizenship, and humanitarian lines of business and increased staff productivity and application adjudications by 19%. Our fully digital technology reduced direct mail handling and delivered a 55% reduction in paper transactions, letting USCIS move work to locations where staff are available, optimizing workloads, and enabling specialization. Reliability (uptime) also rose significantly.
Our partnership with USCIS on ELIS has become the gold standard for Agile software development and outcome-based delivery in the federal government. We’re now helping to maintain and manage ELIS across 60+ IT systems at: U.S. Customs and Boarder Protection, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Justice, Department of State, U.S. Social Security Administration, U.S. Department of Treasury, and the U.S. Postal Service. We look forward to helping other agencies with our experience and lessons learned from USCIS.
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