The New American Campaign (NAC) aims to modernize and streamline access to naturalization services, so that greater numbers of legally qualified permanent residents take the critical step to becoming American citizens.
Assessment and learning are an important part of this effort. That’s why NAC has commissioned Harder + Company to conduct a data-driven analysis of NAC’s activities. A first annual assessment report is expected for later in 2013.
In parallel, some NAC partners independently commission their own assessments. For instance, the Immigration Advocates Network and ProBono.Net have commissioned an evaluation of CitizenshipWorks, a collection of web-based tools that support the screening of naturalization-eligible individuals and their application for citizenship.
The evaluators report a favorable reception of the CitizenshipWorks tool, noting it “has demonstrated that it can significantly increase efficiency and achieve higher success rates over traditional group processing and individual assistance, offering the potential for dramatically increasing the numbers of immigrants that legal services organizations can serve with existing resources of staff, volunteers, and funding.”
The evaluators also point to the importance of the rollout phase since glitches “can create a bad vibe among users that hampers implementation down the road”—an important learning that NAC incorporates in its approach to innovation.
You can access a pdf version of the report here.
Harder + Company’s broad evaluation of the NAC will include more data on CitizenshipWorks and complement the findings of this report later this year.
The New American Campaign is unique in its emphasis on innovative approaches to delivering naturalization assistance. This makes the campaign’s commitment to learning and assessment even more important.