uscis.gov

Readiness by lane

Green: uscis.gov. Thin bar: Government Services peer median.

Priority fixes for uscis.gov

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 4 external scripts without async or defer.

   Why it matters: A plain <script src> in the head stops the browser from showing anything until that file has downloaded and run.

   What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.

   39% of Government Services peers do this. Limit: Based on the homepage HTML delivered to an automated client; scripts that run later were not executed.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

2. Priority 2 · Enable

   Meta description written

   Observed: The homepage had no meta description.

   What to do: Write a short, specific description of the page for people, not a list of keywords.

   58% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: Meta Titles and Descriptions That Match Search Intent

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 24 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   On Cloudflare: Cloudflare Polish can convert images to WebP.

   15% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

4. Priority 4 · Harden

   CAA records limit who can issue certificates

   Observed: No CAA record was found for uscis.gov, so any public certificate authority may issue for it.

   What to do: Publish CAA records naming every CA you actually use, including the CAs your CDN uses for managed certificates. Add an iodef contact if you want reports.

   On Cloudflare: Cloudflare documents which CAs its managed certificates need; include them in your CAA records.

   17% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

What uscis.gov already does well

Practices fewer than half of Government Services peers use.

• DNSSEC signedDNSSEC delegation (DS record) present.19% of peers
• Reachable over IPv6IPv6 address published.27% of peers
• Static files cached for 30 days or moreLong-lived caching on static files.30% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.uscis.gov/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

DigiCert, 101-day validity, expiring 2027-01-05

Platform or framework

Drupal

DNS operators

Cloudflare

HSTS

max-age 365 days, includeSubDomains, preload

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

96 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

24 (svg 13, png 6, jpg 5)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other Government Services sites

• alberta.ca74
• nyc.gov75
• tsa.gov75
• usa.gov75
• vegvesen.no75

Government Services readiness benchmark