Mini supporting statement

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 1615-0121 )

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: SAVE System Customer Service Survey

PURPOSE:

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is the bureau in the Department of Homeland Security that controls the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program. SAVE operates a verification system that enables Federal, state, local and tribal government agencies to obtain immigration status information to determine a non-citizen, naturalized or derived citizen applicant's eligibility for many public benefits, including Medicaid, driver licenses, commercial and professional licenses and student financial aid.  SAVE has over 1100 federal, state and local government customer agencies.   

 

SAVE has never before conducted a customer survey. SAVE contracted the University of Maryland Center of Excellence to provide technical assistance with developing a customer satisfaction survey and analyzing the anonymized survey results. The survey will assist SAVE in improving the verification service for customer agencies. To accomplish this, SAVE has a relatively short 32 question survey covering the topics that it wants to explore (attached).  SAVE will deliver the survey instrument by email.

The survey asks questions designed to get qualitative customer feedback on the overall SAVE verification system and customer service. The areas covered include: the user friendliness of the SAVE verification system; responses; training; resource materials; and customer service. Each one of these targeted areas are an important aspect of the customer experience with the SAVE verification service.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS:

Respondents will only be SAVE customers, i.e., individuals who use the SAVE system to verify the immigration, naturalized or derived citizenship status of applicants for benefits. These individuals conduct these verifications for federal, state, local and tribal government benefit granting agencies.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

[ ] Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form [ X] Customer Satisfaction Survey

[ ] Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software [ ] Small Discussion Group

[] Focus Group [ ] Other: ______________________

CERTIFICATION:

I certify the following to be true:

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low-burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The results are not intended to be disseminated to the public.

5. Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions.

6. The collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the future.

Name:_Raymond Rayner

To assist review, please provide answers to the following question:

Personally Identifiable Information:

1. Is personally identifiable information (PII) collected? [ ] Yes [x ] No

2. If Yes, is the information that will be collected included in records that are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974? [ ] Yes [ ] No

3. If Applicable, has a System or Records Notice been published? [ ] Yes [ ] No

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? [ ] Yes [x ] No

BURDEN HOURS

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
State, local or tribal governments	484	9 minutes	73
Federal government	616	9 minutes	93
Totals	1100		166

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is the $19,998 for the contract with the University of Maryland. We are incurring no other additional costs to administer the survey.

If you are conducting a focus group, survey, or plan to employ statistical methods, please provide answers to the following questions:

The selection of your targeted respondents

1. Do you have a customer list or something similar that defines the universe of potential respondents and do you have a sampling plan for selecting from this universe? [ x] Yes [ ] No

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan)? If the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and how you will select them?

Sampling Plan attached.

Every SAVE user has an account in the system linked to an email address. SAVE plans to send an email to a sample of these users requesting them to take the survey (attached). The email has a link to the web based survey instrument.

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[ x ] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[ ] Telephone

[ ] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? [ ] Yes [x ] No

3