SAVE Engagement Event Summaries
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) SAVE program periodically hosts stakeholder events to allow SAVE users to share concerns, experiences, and ideas about the status verification process through SAVE. Feedback may support future process improvements.
Stay tuned for future engagements.
On Jan. 17, 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services hosted a SAVE Registration and Account Management Listening Session. SAVE is an online service for registered government agencies to verify the immigration status or naturalized/acquired U.S. citizenship of applicants for a benefit or license. The listening session audience included registered SAVE users from federal, state, and local agencies that administer benefits and licenses. The session was an opportunity for registered agency users to provide feedback on the SAVE registration and account management processes and ask questions.
Some of the issues brought up at the listening session included:
- Feedback on the registration process and system access and login procedures.
- The User and Account management processes, including accessing or updating individual user and/or agency accounts; or (if user role allows) accessing, adding, updating, or deleting other users.
- Experiences using SAVE reports, resources, or user support.
Issues that stood out:
- Users requested additional reporting options within SAVE, including: (1) a view of all cases run by their agency for a specific period; and (2) case reports that show all cases that are currently pending (within step two or three of additional verification). Users also expressed interest in a report to show an agency’s monthly cases run by user for billing/transactions purposes. SAVE clarified that this report is already available as a “Month End Agency Transaction by User Summary” Report.
- Users identified issues with Case Search or User Search. They would like more filtering options to limit what results are returned by a search. They also would like to have a better method for finding/viewing existing cases run by their agency.
What we learned:
- Users expressed trouble locating and/or accessing previous case(s) and duplicate case responses, issues with closing cases left open, and a burden of creating a new case.
- Users have varying levels of expertise. Training (self-led or instructor-led) continues to be an area of need.
- Users expressed concern with timeliness of support during registration or when requesting assistance in email or by phone.
- Users identified interest in attending upcoming SAVE webinars.
- Users identified interest in having additional options available to “search” resources on the SAVE public website.
This and other valuable feedback received will be considered for future process improvements. For more information on SAVE and other events, subscribe to GovDelivery or visit SAVE Webinars.
In April and May 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted four listening sessions to discuss potential enhancements for SAVE Interface Control Agreement (ICA) version 38 (v38). This version has eight changes that will benefit SAVE Web services users:
- Business: Capturing reasons for submitting additional verification requests (AVR);
- Business: Providing uniform responses by updating initial responses to reflect responses currently provided at 2nd and 3rd step;
- Business: Eliminating references to 2nd and 3rd step and instead referring to all manually worked cases as escalations;
- Business: Automatically requesting an immigration document for cases where little or no information is returned on the initial query;
- Business: Providing a digital ICA;
- Technical: Providing live documentation for draft ICA release;
- Technical: Changing from Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to Representational State Transfer (REST) application programming interface (API)/ICA; and
- Technical: Making architecture updates to modernize case search and analytics.
As agencies adopt ICA v38, the program expects a reduction in escalations, faster response times and an overall enhanced user experience. Additionally, agencies will have the ability to conduct automated testing and provide feedback with access to the code through the open API and validate ICA adoption.
Implementing an ICA requires significant resources from all parties involved, particularly SAVE registered agencies. These listening sessions – which included SAVE Web services users from federal, state, and local benefit granting and licensing agencies – were an opportunity for users to provide crucial feedback on the draft ICA v38 early in the planning process.
The first two listening sessions introduced ICA v38 and invited an open line of communication about the features being considered. The final two listening sessions presented a revised draft of ICA v38, which included modifications related to feedback received. SAVE Web services users provided additional feedback in meetings and via email. The listening sessions and feedback were immensely beneficial for the eventual release of ICA v38 as well as future improvements to the SAVE program. The final draft of ICA v38 incorporating web services changes will be released later in summer 2024.
For more information on SAVE and other events, subscribe to GovDelivery or visit SAVE Webinars.