Passport Renewal

I dread going to Government offices - if I can pay someone to get it done, I usually take that route. But in case of passport renewal, I have to be there even if I take help. And they said it is far better these days with Passport Seva Kendras(PSK) in town.

I searched around and found some blogs that talked about their experience(which was not very smooth), and figured out things about renewal from their website, which was pretty descent. You can upload your passport application and documents and take an appointment. All the information in the website are current and useful.

Being in the heart of town(Lalbagh Road), I took a bus and walked up to the PSK(it is on a one-way road). There was a queue which I thought was for walk-in candidates, but turned out that it was for the 2:15PM appointments! After 15 minutes wait in the queue, we were let inside where they verify your documents - I had to get one more copy of my Gas connection document and the copier inside wasn't working (till I got the copies from outside). It was a bit haphazard that you need to do a bit of jostling around to get to the counter. Then they issued a token and I was inside by 3:00PM.

There was some major ruckus going on because the automated queue management system was broken down. BTW, IT major TCS runs the show in the PSK except for the verification, which was done passport officials. Initial submission and taking the photo/thumb impression went pretty smooth and I was done by 3:30. Then I had to wait till 5:45 for the verification process. Again there is a wait inside for the first verification officer and after that the next dispatch officer. Since it was all screwed up even the Passport Officer(PO) was doing the verification to ease the load. It took another hour and 15 minutes to get it done.

It was very obvious that they are calling too many people without looking at their capability. The front desk and queue are managed by TCS completely and it seems they have developed the applications for the PSK. The PO was complaining about their lousy software and the number of appointments given. But his concern was more for his people who had to stay beyond 6PM and not for the applicants. The guy was very poor at using the computer - he would look down at the keyboard to enter 5 letters and press return without looking at the screen and find that there is an error - then he would call the TCS support girl and she would get it done for him!

Somebody from TCS or the Passport Office needs to have some expertise on queuing theory - if they care about people's time at the PSK, apparently they don't care a bit. I don't think they need technology(big screens, automated call-up etc.) to manage the queue at the PSK. What they need is some common sense and a bit of awareness about queuing theory. The first part of verifying the application and photo happens very quickly, the wait time is 30 minutes. There are a lot of counters to do that. The next two phases(verification, dispatch) have only very few counters. So there is no point in having so many counters for the first part - or they need to increase the capacity of the next two phases and also consider the fact that they are not so comfortable computer users. I am sure nobody is looking at these wait times(because they don't care about people's time) - they are worried only about how early they can go home. The PO blames TCS for the broken processes and appears to have no control over things.

Also the public gets worked up knowing very well that things are broken - can't blame them because they have very poor trust in these offices. Some of them were also restless folks who wouldn't sit down but crowd the entrance area looking for their number, which made things worse. Once you are inside the seva kendra, you cannot get out and all you get is water and tea. They do let in people with small kids quickly, but others need to be prepared for it. I kept myself hydrated and kept my cool.