The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that its Burden Reduction Initiative (BRI) reduced the total amount of time the public spends accessing DHS services by 20 million hours annually.
“Improving the customer experience is one of the Department’s top priorities. Through the tremendous talent and dedication of our personnel, we have made great strides in doing so,” DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said. “There is much more work to be done. We will continue to find new ways to modernize services and harness technology to improve efficiency, equity, and accessibility in everything that we do.”
Mayorkas established the BRI to remove administrative barriers, increase equity, build trust and strengthen security in the wake of the agency interacting more frequently with the American public than any other federal agency or department.
The enhanced customer experience can be attributed to actions that include improving the transportation worker credentialing process; reducing the time frame for transporting cargo; improving the student and exchange visitors experience; and strengthening nationwide fire safety.
DHS has simplified online paperwork processes that include using automatic renewals and short forms, enabling online submission of forms, where appropriate, and pre-populating forms and reusing data where applicable.
DHS will continue to take proactive steps as a means of ensuring the public can efficiently access the services and programs it offers via increased transparency and accessibility through policy and regulatory changes and an improved customer digital experience.