Leadership

Donald K. Hawkins, Chief Privacy Officer

Mission

The Office of Privacy seeks to preserve and enhance privacy protections for individuals and to promote transparency of USCIS operations.
 

Vision

USCIS’s culture of privacy results from how well executive leadership, managers and employees understand, implement and enforce federal privacy laws and regulations. Privacy stewardship leads to proper handling of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).  

What We Do

The Office of Privacy:

• Evaluates USCIS legislative and regulatory proposals involving collection, use, and disclosure of PII
• Provides privacy policy and programmatic oversight, and support implementation across USCIS
• Evaluates USCIS programs, systems and operations to identify privacy sensitivities; recommends mitigation strategies to reduce potential privacy impacts; and provides guidance and global assistance to USCIS program offices and directorates in meeting such requirements
• Operates a USCIS-wide Privacy Incident Response Program to ensure that incidents involving PII are properly reported, investigated and mitigated
• Responds to and addresses complaints of privacy violations
• Provides privacy training, education and outreach
• Provides advice and technical assistance to leadership and management to ensure privacy protections are implemented throughout USCIS programs, systems, processes and operations, and ensure USCIS’s adherence to federal, regulatory, statutory, departmental and component privacy requirements, mandates, directives and policy