Post
by cleire8 » Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:04 pm
All covid did was highlight how woeful and outdated the processes are under the current system. Applications were never going to slow down, literally as time was going on people were able to acquire more reckonable residency so applications only going to increase and make the backlog worse. More akin to an application tsunami.
If they had had a transparent, understandable system for the customer they might be shown a bit more patience. Even monthly figures of data showing how many application moved through the stages, attain approval etc. But every response is "We cannot update you at the moment, please don't contact us for general queries" just makes people more anxty and frustrated as time goes on. Then that just leads to a mass of communications via letters, emails, phone calls, FOI etc because people can't get an adequate update in the first place and removes resources away from the staff but hey, they don't give us the information in the first place. Its a vicious circle.
One on the one hand the department, along with the rest of the civil service, were never going to be able to plan for a mass "WFH" scenario and there was always going to be a slowdown as they just can't take certain documentation out of premises. But the system is so outdated they can't even give application updates / communications via MyGovId website (same way the Revenue do). If they alleviated these small inefficiency it would help make some processes a bit smoother and easy for both applicant and department. People just want to know where they stand on one of the biggest decisions of their life. It's not like we are ordering a takeaway here. It's one of the most opaque bureaucratic processes I've ever been through