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Operating Worldwide Service and Field Desks for USCIS

  • Customer Story
  • Cloud Services
  • National Security

Background

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is responsible for lawful immigration to the United States. Within USCIS, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) leads the design and development of secure immigration IT services and products, helping transform the nation’s immigration system.

USCIS OIT supports more than 27,000 government employees and contractors working at over 250 offices worldwide. This environment is home to more than 40,000 desktops and laptops, 25,000 printers and peripherals, 1,200 servers, and 15,000 mobile devices.

Understanding the Need

To ensure its end users could effectively perform their mission-enabling responsibilities, USCIS OIT sought contractor support in operating and maturing their service desk, providing IT support to field offices and service centers, executing account management services, and performing hardware incident resolution.
USCIS OIT goals included:

  • Continuously improving incident/ problem resolution speed
  • Enhancing end-user self-service abilities with comprehensive and easy-to-use solutions
  • Identifying the root causes of common technical problems and documenting replicable solutions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service desk operations.
  • Introducing new technologies for end-user support as they become available, ensuring best-in-class service to their user community.
77,000
Workstations and servers deployed at 250 sites.
16,000
Calls supported monthly by GovCIO’s service desk.
25%
Increase in account management efficiency using automation.

Our Solution

To ensure DHS USCIS end-users could effectively perform their duties, USCIS OIT selected GovCIO (formally Salient CGRT) for the Information Technology User and Field Operations Support (NEON) program.

Since 2015, GovCIO has provided worldwide service desk and field support operations, as well as deployment, server, and network support services. Using ITIL best practices, our team has optimized service desk delivery, defined a roadmap to adopt ITIL 4, implemented AI-driven solutions, and leveraged mobility solutions to enhance the overall customer experience and operational efficiency, as well as improve field support activities, incident resolution speed, and end-user self-service abilities.

Enterprise Service Desk Operations

GovCIO provides 24/7/365 Tier 0, 1, 1.5, and 2 ESD operations based on ITIL 4, Help Desk Institute (HDI), and PMBOK best practices. Our SD operations include account, incident, problem, and knowledge management. Our Tier 0 services included self-help, phone, chat, and email support, while Tier 1.5/2 responsibilities included VIP and remote support and escalation. Our monthly service desk operations support an average of 16,000 calls; 300 chats during Tier 1 contacts; 12,000 Tier 2 incidents; and 4,000 Tier 2 requests. We confirm resolution and ensure each end-user receives personalized attention with a sense of urgency.

Our Field Service Engineers (FSEs) provide on-site and remote support for desktop deployments, releases, and changes; server and/or other IT equipment installations or relocations; and configuration and deployments of new or upgraded software. Through enhanced remote access tools, we have increased cost efficiencies by reducing travel costs for remote support. We’ve performed 155 CONUS and 61 OCONUS deployments, with the technical refresh of 77,000+ workstations and servers, at 250 CONUS/OCONUS sites. We also support wireless services for 15,000 mobile devices.

ServiceNow Implementation

Upon contract award, GovCIO helped migrate service desk operations from an antiquated Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) system, which had a large backlog of unanswered and unresolved help desk tickets and lacked automated processes, to a new, best-of-breed ServiceNow service desk platform. We now use ServiceNow as the primary enterprise-wide ITSM tool for reporting, incident, problem, and knowledge management, and requests for service management activities.

Results

GovCIO has had a significant impact on USCIS OIT’s ability to carry out its mission. We’ve improved the overall user experience, customer satisfaction, and the productivity of service desk resources by:

  • Using automation solutions to increase the efficiency of account management by 25%.
  • Improving end-user visibility into wait times, regardless of service desk contact method.
  • Improving the self-service capability within chat interfaces to automatically select and send customers a “best match” solution, written and explicitly formatted to address the symptoms of their specific needs.
  • Expanding Tier 0 services to include peer-to-peer support through our “Ask the Community” feature, which allows users to collaborate and answer each other’s questions, promoting collaboration and expanding users’ technical abilities.

Beyond introducing these capabilities, our team:

  • Improved end-user satisfaction survey methods, increasing survey response rates by over 400% for improved insights into end-user perspectives.
  • Was awarded the prestigious USCIS Director’s Beacon Award for supporting short notice responses to critical IT deployment efforts – including one in Amman, Jordan – that enabled USCIS to process nearly 12,000 refugees in less than three months.