Why I’m bringing the US Digital Service to the Department of Homeland Security

[Commentary] My name is Eric Hysen, and I’m the Digital Service Lead for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). For the past year, I’ve been working with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within the Department of Homeland Security, to modernize our country’s immigration system. We’ve made good progress in partnership with exceptional teams inside the agency. Today, two of the largest immigration transactions are processed completely electronically on a modern application, and we’re on the cusp of transforming more critical parts of the immigration system, including the process for naturalization. So now, I’m thrilled to leave my role at the White House to formally join the Department of Homeland Security as the first member of the DHS Digital Service team.

We’ll be taking the model the US Digital Service has been using for the past year and making it a core part of how DHS does business. We’ll be expanding our work to modernize the immigration system as well as taking on new challenges across DHS’s critical missions  --  everything from facilitating international trade to responding to disasters to improving the federal government’s information security practices.

[Eric Hysen is the Digital Service Lead with the Department of Homeland Security]