USCIS site relaunches on DHS cloud and CMS platform
Agency hopes common platform will cut costs and accelerate future development.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has redesigned its website in line with its parent agency’s online presence and moved onto the Department of Homeland Security's cloud.
USCIS unveiled its redesigned website on Oct. 30 as part of DHS’ strategy to use a shared content management system and consolidate DHS websites.
A USCIS official said the agency has also transitioned its website infrastructure to DHS’ cloud environment, which will cut costs by reducing the need for locally managed Web servers and improve the website's reliability and redundancy.
The new site provides expanded news alerts and customer notifications, as well as tools to help users check case status, make appointments, and find information on adoption and immigration appeals.
A DHS official told FCW that using a common platform across its component agencies will not only save money but also take advantage of the knowledge and skills of those involved in maintaining the individual component sites. Component agencies will be able to more easily share Web development and design work, code and features.
The official said DHS will maintain a library of tested and approved code and features that component agencies can use and include in their individual sites. Component agencies will also be able to develop features on their own and submit them to the library for use by others. DHS expects the sharing to reduce the amount of time it takes for components to deploy new features by cutting down on both development and testing timelines.