For nearly 20 years, consumers have been doing business on the Internet.  Whether through booking travel online or purchasing books on Amazon.com, we are used to dealing with online web forms.   It is simple, intuitive and part of our daily lives.

For government agencies that deal with many stakeholders and multiple processes, setting up a simple e-commerce site or web capture form is not that easy.   Though one agency just celebrated a major IT milestone that will transform the way that foreign citizens manage their U.S. visas.

The Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency has launched its first online application form, which will allow eligible visa-holders to establish an online account in the USCIS “ELIS” system and apply to extend the duration of their visit to the U.S.

As the first step in a multi-year transformation initiative to shift from paper to digital forms, this new system will enhance overall efficiencies by removing the cumbersome paperwork that involved multiple offices through USCIS

We applaud USCIS’s efforts to transform the way it manages these complex processes.  Though with any new IT initiative, the agency may be confronted with bandwidth issues that will need to be mitigated.  Often when a new web property is launched of this magnitude it is easy to underestimate the sheer volume of traffic and activity it can generate.

Any government agency that is dealing with a new web migration can certainly benefit from new tools that help manage bandwidth, as well as optimize Wide Area Networks (WAN).   Building a new online process is the first step that needs to be followed with the right strategies for managing the success (i.e., traffic and usage) of a program like the one implemented by USCIS.   Because if you build it, they may actually come…