WASHINGTON – Today, Homeland Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas announced customer experience improvements the Department has implemented since President Biden’s signed the Executive Order, “Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government,” which directed agencies to improve the overall experience for customers accessing government services and benefits. Secretary Mayorkas has made improving customer experience one of the Department's top priorities in order to remove administrative barriers, increase equity, build trust, and strengthen security.
“Through the talent and dedication of the Department’s employees, we have made significant progress modernizing our delivery of services by harnessing technology and other innovations,” said Secretary Mayorkas. “There is more work to be done, as we continue to improve the customer experience for the millions of individuals with whom we interact every day, while advancing equity, protecting individuals’ privacy rights and civil liberties, and increasing our openness, transparency, and accountability.”
DHS interacts more frequently on a daily basis with the American public than any other federal agency, from travelers moving through air, land, and seaports of entry, to businesses importing goods into the country, to immigrants applying for services.
Over the past year, DHS has:
- Begun accepting mobile driver’s licenses at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints in Arizona, Colorado, and Maryland with plans to expand to other locations in the future, allowing travelers to simply tap their phones to go through airport security.
- Simplified policies for disaster survivors to prove their residency or home ownership when applying for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. These updated policies reduce paperwork burden for disaster survivors. As a result, more than 100,000 survivors received $559 million in additional assistance.
- Taken action to significantly reduce processing times for immigration benefits. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has set aggressive, agency-wide backlog reduction goals, improved timely access to employment authorization documents, and digitized additional forms.
- Streamlined vessel entry and clearance by Customs and Border Protection at U.S. seaports, allowing vessels to electronically transmit necessary data, saving trade companies an estimated $18 million per year.
- Announced commitments to eliminate 20 million of the 190 million hours of paperwork burden DHS places on the public each year by May 2023. This will accomplished by reducing the amount of information requested, automating and streamlining processes, and improving usability of forms and services.
To support these efforts, DHS established a comprehensive customer experience program led by experts from across industry, advocacy groups, academic institutions, government, and other communities of interest. These efforts have been further informed by guidance provided by leading industry and public sector executives on the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC). Last week, the HSAC Subcommittee on Customer Experience and Service Delivery issued recommendations including that the Department create accountability measures for customer experience, provide more flexible frontline staffing models, further leverage technology, and improve customer communication and transparency. DHS will use these recommendations to strengthen and build on existing efforts in the months to come.
The Department continues to actively recruit for roles in customer experience, product management, design, software engineering, and data science at multiple levels. To learn more, visit DHS.gov/Join-DHS-CX-Team.