By PHK
(Note: for practical suggestions on navigating the passport application process, please see our tips page.)
Highlights from a Jam-Packed, Emotional Hearing, June 19
In a jam-packed room on June 19, heavy-hitters on the International Operations Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took on State Department representative Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Maura Harty in an emotional, probing hearing about the continuing crisis over US passport issuance delays. This bipartisan effort chaired by Subcommittee Chair Bill Nelson (D) of Tampa, Florida was broadcast on C-Span 3. For those of us with computers but no televised access to the station, it was possible to watch online. For anyone following or caught up in this saga, the nearly two hours spent was well worth it.
All Senators were careful to praise the passport office employees for their hard work and continued diligence and to acknowledge Harty as a well respected, competent career diplomat. Given this 'mini-Katrina' at the State Department, the Bush administration should count whatever lucky stars it may still have that Harty is a career diplomat with an excellent reputation as a manager and not a political hack who can't manage her way out of a paper bag and that her staff has been performing yeomen's work under very difficult circumstances for the past six months.
"Morale is horrible at State and people are leaving in droves" - Voinovich
Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio), however, did point out that while Colin Powell and Richard Armitage had done a good job of managing the State Department during W's first term, that he had warned Secretary Condoleezza Rice and the new Deputy Secretary John Negroponte that "someone had better pay attention to management at State because morale is horrible and people are leaving in droves."
There were also a number of overriding concerns about government competency or incompetency - not only about how the State Department could have underestimated the increased passport volume so badly and responded to it so sluggishly - but as importantly whether the US government will be capable of dealing with much expanded documentation requirements that will accompany the increased identity checks of immigrants if a new immigration bill is enacted as well as the looming ballooning of passport applications for land and sea travel to Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Bermuda beginning 2008. Furthermore, Senators were concerned whether State would be able to handle adequately the increased passport load come October 1, 2007 when the air travel "temporary waiver" for the Western Hemisphere Initiative ends.
(Note: It is clear that Congress is going to mandate postponement of the land/sea requirement until July 2009 despite DHS Czar Michael Chertoff's continuing insistence that it go into effect January 2008.)
Some highlights from the June 19 hearing:
- There are currently 500,000 passport applications that have been in the system for more than 3 months. The State Department is able to issue about 1.5 million passports per month and now has 3 million applications pending completion.
- The initial staffing and facilities predictions for the Western Hemisphere Initiative were based on a 2005 study State outsourced to the 'trusted and well known' Bearing Point, Inc. The study was based on figures drawn from governmental and non-governmental sources. (WV Note: Bearing Point is well known all right. It is one of those infamous centipede contractors with numerous USAID contracts in Iraq as well as a $2 million one to administer the process of administering US policy in Iraq for the State Department).
- Based on BP's study, the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs grossly underestimated how quickly Americans would react to the new passport requirements and failed to take into consideration Americans using passports for domestic identity purposes as opposed to foreign travel. (WV Note: was that latter question asked in the study? Did State think it would be a consideration when working with BP in designing the study? And did State consider factoring in the possibility that some people are renewing their passports a little early to avoid the "stranded at the gate" syndrome reported in the papers so did not indicate specific travel plans on their application although they do plan to travel abroad in the future?) Harty also blamed State's media "campaign" announcing the new requirements as another factor for the increased volume. (WV Note: doesn't seem as if much of the major media picked up on the story even semi-big time until late May when the situation went from bad to worse although some local and regional media outlets had reported on the story earlier.)
- Mexico, Canada, Jamaica and several other countries affected by the Western Hemisphere Initiative requirements have just agreed to accept the documents required under State's temporary waiver policy announced on June 8.
- State is now conducting another study (unidentified contractor) of predicted volume to help gauge future staffing and facilities needs. This should be completed by the end of the summer.
- To make up for earlier massive miscalculations and tortoise-like slowness in responding to the actual volume (which was, in reality, for May 2007 only about 33% above May 2006), State is now requesting $40 million to hire 400 additional staff members and expand passport agency facilities in several locations. Whether this is for new money or is a request that reprograms existing State Department funds once upon a time dedicated to some other function, is unclear to me. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of those details would explain.
- The 400 new staffers for 2007 include permanent government employees as well as positions handled by contractors. No ratio was given but Harty did say they will concentrate on hiring more adjudicators and fraud investigators and will also be using funds to better train the people at the Post Offices and other places throughout the US who accept the applications to begin with. According to Harty, the government employee attrition rate is low, but the contractor's staff constantly turns over by about a third. A fair number of contract staff apply for and are hired by State. (WV: This, of course, means continual training and security background checks of a lot of people. One has to wonder whether this degree of outsourcing is - in reality - cost-effective.) Harty said further that State was rehiring about 300 State Department retirees who already knew the process and whose security clearances could be updated easily. (WN Note: In early May, the provision to rehire 150 civil service retirees had cleared all bureaucratic hurdles, but there were still bureaucratic problems in bringing back Foreign Service staff. According to Harty, State hadn't thought of the retiree possibility until March.)
- Harty said that State had increased its "hot line" (877-482-2778) telephone capabilities by adding a new (contract) call center in Kentucky. She also said that State had just established a centralized passport printing plant (also contract) in Arkansas, had hired back the retired director of its first call center, had established trouble-shooting visiting teams to go to passport agencies that needed additional help, and had added a special Task Force in the State Department itself. She said phones were being answered 24/7, that the call volume had decreased substantially as of her testimony and of the 400 new lines, 40 were dedicated to handling calls from members of Congress. (WV Note: commenters are still reporting that the "hot line" is too often a "cold" or "luke warm" one - requiring long waits on line to reach a human. Commenters have also indicated that too often call center operators do not have answers to their questions when they do reach them. The phone line answered by a human who provides the most reliable information is the one for the Task Force in the State Department itself (202-647-7948) so we're told. ) Part of the bottleneck was/is Citibank, the previously unnamed, and then reluctantly named financial institution that is under contract to the Treasury Department. Citibank handles the initial stage of the application process. Citibank obtained this contract in October 2006 (for the previous 20 years it was held by Mellon) and obviously failed to respond adequately to the crisis. Citibank slipped well behind in meeting the 24 hour turn around time required in the contract and according to Harty, did not begin to meet it until mid-May.
WV Explanatory Note: the contract calls for Citibank to open the mailed in application envelopes, extract and deposit the checks, assign tracking numbers (this is the crucial personal locater # needed for travel to Mexico, Canada, etc. without a passport), register them on line and then send the documents on to one of the passport agency offices for adjudication and printing. The State Department calls this first part of the process, "the lockbox."
WV Note: There are people still having trouble obtaining their tracking numbers as noted by Senators Jim Webb (D-VA), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) as well as a recent WV commenter. Seems to me, then, one still has to question the quality of Citibank's service and whether, in fact, Citibank is, living up to all the contract terms. Harty added that applicants are to be mailed a postcard when their passport is forwarded to a passport agency. The postcard tells them where to find their tracking (locater) number online. One also has to wonder about the unnamed Call Center contract.
- Several Senators questioned the fuzzy terms of the State Department's expedited refunds policy and pressed Harty to 1) explain the concrete terms of applicability and 2) get State to refund the money to those affected - no applications needed (WV Note: the current hazy policy is found on State's website). Harty said she would have to talk to State's legal office about proposed changes.
- Harty said that the majority of Americans receive passports on time (apparently within the 10-12 week period), but admitted that this was not good enough. She first said that State's website was kept up to date, but then later said she would make sure that the website was updated better. (WV Note: State's website was laggard - or over optimistic - on wait times from the beginning. The current estimate of 10-12 weeks for a non-expedited passport is more accurate than times posted previously, but we still read of people who have had to wait longer (13-16 weeks) and have had to scale 11 foot walls to obtain their passports while their planes sat on the runways.)
- State's target is to reduce the wait time to 8 weeks by the end of September and 6 weeks by the end of the December 2007. Harty said they would do this by hiring more staff (why the $40 million is crucial) and expanding facilities at a time when the workload - if history proves the rule - has slowed down. (WV Note: The proof, of course, is in the pudding.)
- Finally, in response to a question from Senator Nelson regarding State's handling of passports for people planning to travel to countries outside the Western Hemisphere Initiative, Harty said the passports were being individually reprioritized at Citibank and at the Passport Agencies. In addition, she said that those paying for Expedited Service being moved to the front of the line. (WV Note: This, as Hardy indicated, is not the best way to do business. It sounds to me like yet another bureaucratic nightmare that raises all sorts of other questions including whether people who applied to travel to Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean or Bermuda will ever see their new passports before Christmas).
Meanwhile, stay tuned. A lot was said - and not said in that hearing room. There's more to come and I may well write more on what came out during the hearing tomorrow or later this week.
For previous WhirledView posts and comments on navigating the system please see Categories: US Passports and Visas.