Monday, August 29, 2011

USCIS switches to electronic forms & filing: new rule effective date November 28, 2011.

Say goodbye to traditional immigration processing forms.

08/29/2011

In preparation for a long-delayed transition to online processing of immigration
applications, the Homeland Security Department has released new rules for
describing forms and filing procedures in official policies.

The 43-page federal notice published Monday instructs the U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services, a unit of DHS, to stop typing on documents the traditional
numbers and titles for various benefit claims, such as "Application for
Naturalization, form N-400." Instead, to accommodate the new computerized
Transformation system, USCIS policies and rules will carry more generic phrases,
such as "the form designated by USCIS."

Rule effective date is November 28, 2011.

The goal of the $2.4 billion Transformation program, according to the
guidelines, is to improve customer service by offering applicants online
accounts for submitting and tracking their cases. Agency employees also should
be able to work faster because they will be collaborating on documents
electronically, rather than physically transferring folders between offices.
USCIS receives about 6 million forms annually.

All this digitization should tighten security by enabling staff to cross-check
information from multiple applications so they can better detect identity fraud,
DHS officials said.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-08-29/pdf/2011-20990.pdf and
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20110829_3929.php


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