The Bureau of Consular Affairs is the public face of the Department of State. Consular Affairs protects U.S. citizens, facilitates international travel, and increases national security. Consular Services processed 24.5 million passports in FY2024 and issued 7.3 million visas in FY2022.

18F was collaborating with Consular Affairs to increase the public’s trust in government, improve consular services based on customers needs, and support transformation efforts across the Bureau. This included:

• A redesign of travel.state.gov to ensure the American public has trusted international travel information and easy access to consular services
• Building a new, modern system to process passport applications more efficiently
• Standing up the first Customer Experience program at Consular Affairs to scale their capability to improve services based on people’s needs

18F had multiple teams providing services across Consular Affairs. Because of the abrupt halt to our work, 18F teams weren’t able to properly hand off our work to State Department teams. Consular Affairs is left with significantly reduced resources to continue this work.