Case Studies

Agency Drives Transformation by Ensuring Thousands of Stakeholders Are Agents for Change

US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), a component of the Department of Homeland Security, is the government agency that oversees lawful immigration to the United States. The agency’s staff of more than 10,000 people adjudicates more than one million immigration cases per year. USCIS is embarking on an enterprise-wide initiative that will transform the agency from a decentralized paper-based business model to a more centralized and consolidated electronic environment for case management. Adding urgency to this effort was the political environment in which immigration continues to be a significant security issue — requiring cases to be adjudicated faster and with more diligence than ever before.

USCIS engaged North Highland consulting to begin a change management initiative to encourage adoption of this transformation across all levels of leadership and all employees. The North Highland team was able to provide a four-stage roadmap to include an initial snapshot of over 800 individual stakeholders and 300 stakeholder groups and their specific level of engagement. The team was also able to provide the client with a comprehensive matrix of plans and protocols to identify stakeholders who should advance to a higher level of engagement and the plan to get them there.

As a result of this engagement, USCIS was able to begin executing the communication plans and identifying, as well as empowering, change agents as soon as possible. The success of this project affected not only citizens and would-be citizens, but also 10,000 CIS employees, 12,000 CIS contractors, and thousands of agency employees.

Access the complete case study to learn more about North Highland’s change management approach.