Hours on hold and endless queues: Canadians still grappling with poor passport service

[CdnFox]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tasker-passport-wait-times-1.7196445

Canadians routinely wait hours on the phone and in person when dealing with Passport Canada, leaving many travellers infuriated by the quality of the agency's customer service.

Post-COVID chaos at passport offices prompted the federal government to step up and promise a series of changes to get the documents into travellers' hands in a timely manner.

Passport Canada claims that after a prolonged period of pandemic-related delays, the agency has returned to its normal "service standard" of getting passports to most people in 10 or 20 business days, depending on where an application is initially filed.

But the agency's service standard makes no promises about how quickly they will serve people in person or over the phone.

 

 

So here's another example of how PP is going to be able to look like a hero with minimal effort if he wants to.

If he were smart, right now he'd be tagging someone and saying "You're going to be minister in charge of this when i win - start right now looking at how you can automate this process and cut down on the wait times and headaches and get this working".   

It won't be hard. I've seen this kind of thing before and it's a safe bet that at various levels the staff already know precisely where the logjams are and what needs to change. If they take the time to ask the questions now and think about the solutions they will be able to walk into office and make a major impact within a year.

 

Is there ANY part of the trudeau federal gov't that's actually working properly?

[Legato]

1 hour ago, CdnFox said:

Is there ANY part of the trudeau federal gov't that's actually working properly?

The department of Corruption and Incompetency.

[CdnFox]

10 minutes ago, Legato said:

The department of Corruption and Incompetency.

I hear they're backlogged.

[ExFlyer]

The Passport office close to where I live is very quick.

Walked in with my papers, correctly filled out and an acceptable photo, waited 5 minutes and within a week had my passport.

There is another not far away and there is no lineups either.

[impartialobserver]

My only advice to those in charge would be when you automate this process... build in some extra coding so that if someone spells Toronto as Trnto.. it does not stall out. An example would be "ifelse(Toronto %in% c("Tornto","Trnto".. and so on")


That was one of our issues in UI in NV. When someone would misspell the name of their employer or their name... the file would basically freeze up and they would be forced to call into a call center. This call center was woefully understaffed. This occurred while we had a Democrat Governor. He was far from perfect but this was not his fault. The UI system and DB was instituted in 2005.. 11 years before he was elected. 

Edited May 8, 2024 by impartialobserver

[CdnFox]

Just now, ExFlyer said:

The Passport office close to where I live is very quick.

Walked in with my papers, correctly filled out and an acceptable photo, waited 5 minutes and within a week had my passport.

There is another not far away and there is no lineups either.

Sounds like the exceptions that prove the rule.  It's the cbc reporting they woudn't say something about the libs if it weren't accurate

[ExFlyer]

33 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

Sounds like the exceptions that prove the rule.  It's the cbc reporting they woudn't say something about the libs if it weren't accurate

????

Are actually implying that the CBC is becoming conservative?

After all this time shitting on CBC for being pro liberal??

[CdnFox]

1 hour ago, impartialobserver said:

My only advice to those in charge would be when you automate this process... build in some extra coding so that if someone spells Toronto as Trnto.. it does not stall out. An example would be "ifelse(Toronto %in% c("Tornto","Trnto".. and so on")


That was one of our issues in UI in NV. When someone would misspell the name of their employer or their name... the file would basically freeze up and they would be forced to call into a call center. This call center was woefully understaffed. This occurred while we had a Democrat Governor. He was far from perfect but this was not his fault. The UI system and DB was instituted in 2005.. 11 years before he was elected. 

It's canada, we only have so many towns, just do a frikkin' pull down   LOL

 

25 minutes ago, ExFlyer said:

????

Are actually implying that the CBC is becoming conservative?

No, i'm stating that the CBC is NOT conservative so it's not like they'd negatively slant a story about the liberals    IF they say something bad  about the libs it's probably true

Quote

After all this time shitting on CBC for being pro liberal??

Still shitting on them for being liberal   I am, if nothing else, consistent with my defications  

Edited May 8, 2024 by CdnFox

[impartialobserver]

58 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

It's canada, we only have so many towns, just do a frikkin' pull down   LOL

it was just an example. But anything where the client/customer has to input the information. City, town, name, address, phone number.. all are open for error. I have designed databases such as this. The usual constraint is time and money. It is costly to build in alternative choices and then test them. 

[CdnFox]

13 minutes ago, impartialobserver said:

it was just an example. But anything where the client/customer has to input the information. City, town, name, address, phone number.. all are open for error. I have designed databases such as this. The usual constraint is time and money. It is costly to build in alternative choices and then test them. 

Sure, if it was super easy someone could do it in a weekend for free.  Like the guys who duplicated the multi million dollar arrivecan app

So yeah it'll cost some bucks to do it right. But - a federal employee costs about roughly 120 thousand a year after payroll deductions and benefits (more in some cases) and not including support infrastructure such as hr resources, office space, telephone lines etc, and hiring a few hundred extra might not even be enough to resolve the issue.

So WISELY spending a few million to design some automation at key points to speed things along either internally or externally in the form of web pages is probably a good idea and will likley pay for itself pretty quick

[impartialobserver]

17 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

Sure, if it was super easy someone could do it in a weekend for free.  Like the guys who duplicated the multi million dollar arrivecan app

So yeah it'll cost some bucks to do it right. But - a federal employee costs about roughly 120 thousand a year after payroll deductions and benefits (more in some cases) and not including support infrastructure such as hr resources, office space, telephone lines etc, and hiring a few hundred extra might not even be enough to resolve the issue.

So WISELY spending a few million to design some automation at key points to speed things along either internally or externally in the form of web pages is probably a good idea and will likley pay for itself pretty quick

And then lastly.. patience. When it does not work perfectly after 4 weeks... relax. Lots of complexity and the constraints on processing power (or bandwidth in lay terms) come into play when you integrate it or connect to other databases. For example, our UI claims database in the past would have personal information (ssn, name, address, phone number) in one database and then the employer-side stuff on another. The connecting thread was a SSN in both. One SSN on one side and sometimes multiple iterations of the same SSN on the employer side... it got messy. 

[CdnFox]

Just now, impartialobserver said:

And then lastly.. patience. When it does not work perfectly after 4 weeks... relax. Lots of complexity and the constraints on processing power (or bandwidth in lay terms) come into play when you integrate it or connect to other databases. For example, our UI claims database in the past would have personal information (ssn, name, address, phone number) in one database and then the employer-side stuff on another. The connecting thread was a SSN in both. One SSN on one side and sometimes multiple iterations of the same SSN on the employer side... it got messy. 

Makes sense, you're not going to have it done in a week and live the next day. Obviously some time and testing and do it right rather than fast. As shooters say, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

But - bottom line is that if he's prepping for it now, it should be possible to significantly improve that whole process within a year of taking power.

[impartialobserver]

15 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

Makes sense, you're not going to have it done in a week and live the next day. Obviously some time and testing and do it right rather than fast. As shooters say, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

But - bottom line is that if he's prepping for it now, it should be possible to significantly improve that whole process within a year of taking power.

automation does take away jobs in some situations. Probably for the best. No need to have admin and office staff that handle calls and paperwork when a computer can really do the job better. Now, after you have the system created.. you need staff to handle the inevitable oddball exceptions or errors. Folks like the low effort, repetitive, mundane, but very predictable job. We used to have 5 staff whose sole job was running reports and checking certain values manually. Now, my dept has 2 people in it. We run a script for the manual checking of values. 

[Guest]

19 hours ago, CdnFox said:

Is there ANY part of the trudeau federal gov't that's actually working properly?

The exit door? Its there. Neon signs and all. Heavy gusts of winds.

He would rather look desperate, and get trunced in elections, than a semi dignified exit and passing of the torch.

[CdnFox]

4 hours ago, Perspektiv said:

The exit door? Its there. Neon signs and all. Heavy gusts of winds.

LOL well lets hope.   

Mind you i think his party would suggest that's broken too - the time for him to use that was 6 months ago at the latest.  now if he left it would be very hard to elect a new leader and for that person to get ready for a general election while trying to run the country. 

Quote

He would rather look desperate, and get trunced in elections, than a semi dignified exit and passing of the torch.

Hard to say - maybe he'll be like his dad and leave at the last minute so the next guy gets trounced instead of him but he gets to be pm till the end.   He's done everything else his dad did.

For the party itself it must be a real toss-up for them to decide what they wish he would do. Nobody will want to be leader right now.

But in many ways the smartest thing would be for him to call an election, lose, and for the party to purge itself of his stigma. Focus on trying to hold on to as many seats as possible so that they can rebuild. Take the four years to rebuild the party and Rebrand it, and pick a good leader and give that leader enough time to prepare for the next election.

However it has always been the Bedrock of liberal dogma that you stay in power as long as you can. You avoid an election at all costs unless you think you're going to win. You don't give up a minute of power if you are not forced to.

So I don't think they will. But honestly after the reaction up to that budget they should be planning for a fall election before things get even worse which will allow them to backstab the NDP nicely and probably weaken their vote. You just have to manufacture an outrage which isn't hard.