The CC PAG and HEUG would like to share a statement from Oracle regarding the accelerated delivery date of the SEVIS 6.28 release by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office. Please see the statement below. The CC PAG and the HEUG have a close working relationship with Oracle and have several existing venues/forums available for collaboration across the PeopleSoft SEVIS module, including a SEVIS working group sponsored by the CC PAG. This working group has been working closely with Oracle to test and provide feedback for all modifications/new features developed in conjunction with the SEVIS releases. If you would like to join the SEVIS working group, please contact Jennifer Bayless (jbayless@mst.edu) or Steve Brawn (s-brawn@northwestern.edu). Additionally, bugs or enhancement requests can be suggested and logged in the HEUG’s Product Enhancement Tracker (https://www.heug.org/p/is/ty/type=6). The CC PAG will work with the HEUG community to evaluate and prioritize any viable enhancements/bugs and advocate appropriately with Oracle.
The CC PAG, HEUG, and Oracle thank you for your continued patience during this frustrating time.
Thanks,
The CC PAG
Statement from Oracle:
We realize that the requirements announced by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office for immediate changes in SEVIS 6.28 are creating a hardship for our customers. On 7/20/2016, ICE originally announced that changes in the SEVIS 6.28 Batch Schema would go into effect on 9/30/2016. In an emergency teleconference called by SEVIS officials on 7/22/2016 they announced an earlier effective date of 8/12/2016 for these updates. At that time, we advised them that we would not be able to meet that milestone for delivering these required changes. On that same conference call, at least one other SIS vendor declared that they would also not be able to meet an earlier delivery date.
On 7/25/2016, our first response to this change was to advise our customers via the My Oracle Support SEVIS Proactive Information (Doc ID 2046621.1). At that time, we outlined that our plans to deliver a critical update would not be in time to meet the 8/12/2016 “go live” date. And because we engage with our customers on these kinds of major events, we did meet with the SEVIS Customer Working Group on 8/3/2016 to advise them that a critical would be targeted for 8/29/2016.
It is always our intention to provide adequately tested solutions for regulatory requirements no matter the timing. As you know, we have worked diligently to address changes and delivered updates for 3 major releases of SEVIS in the last 12 months. While we hope that we can deliver a critical patch sooner, 8/29/2016 continues to be the soonest viable target date by which we can deliver a solution that meets our standards for thorough analysis and testing.