Privacy Compliance Review of the USCIS Customer Profile Management Service and National Appointment Scheduling System

USCIS oversees lawful immigration to the United States. As part of this mission, USCIS receives and adjudicates requests for immigration and citizenship benefits. The administration of these benefits requires the collection of biographic and biometric information from benefits requestors.  USCIS uses multiple systems to administer immigration benefits, including the Customer Profile Management Service (CPMS) and National Appointment Scheduling System (NASS). Due to the heightened privacy risks associated with the collection of biometrics information, PIAs for CPMS and NASS in 2015 required the DHS Privacy Office to conduct a PCR.  During the course of this PCR, the DHS Privacy Office found USCIS to be in compliance with privacy requirements of federal privacy laws, DHS and Component privacy regulations and policies, and explicit assurances made by USCIS in existing privacy compliance documentation.  We identified six recommendations designed to improve USCIS privacy compliance, and to incorporate best practices for other USCIS and DHS programs and systems.

October 2017