State required passport specialists to work up to 24 hours of overtime per month in 2023. Image: Steve Heap/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffIn a review of past events that may be a preview of the future, the GAO has said that a hiring freeze in 2017 in State Department positions involved with processing passport applications contributed to the backlog of following years.
“Issuance of U.S. passports is among the State Department’s most visible and important public services. Moreover, its timeliness in adjudicating passport applications and issuing passports affects American citizens as well as the travel and leisure industry,” a report said.
However, by 2023, processing of routine applications on average was taking four weeks longer than before the pandemic and processing of expedited applications was taking two weeks longer, with effects on applications that “included delayed or cancelled travel.” While the number of applications had increased as post-pandemic travel picked up, a “primary factor was staff shortages” resulting from the 2017 hiring freeze, it said.
The freeze was lifted the following year but “State was unable to hire passport specialists at the rate necessary to meet staffing needs because attrition outpaced on-boarding of new staff” and still is below 2017 levels, it said.
In response, the department took steps including requiring passport specialists to work up to 24 hours of overtime per month in 2023, and is developing a long-term “Transformation Roadmap” to modernize processing. However, the department has not set specific goals for all aspects of that plan and “has not identified the resources needed to fully implement the roadmap. State officials told GAO that the greatest risks to implementing the roadmap were insufficient staffing and funding,” it said.
It said that State agreed with recommendations to fully define milestones for the modernization plan and determine the staff and other resources that will be needed.
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