Okay, to be fair I was warned but no warning could have prepared me for 8 hours of organized inefficiency, poor planning and patience that can only be classified as doing God’s work.
My illustration will be a mix of events and my opinion and suggestions on how we can improve things.
10am @ the Embassy
The closest representation of a country on foreign soil- if this is how we choose to be represented and nobody sees this as wrong then we are in bigger trouble than I thought. I felt pride seeing late Simbiat Abiola’s name at the junction knowing her name lives long. I did not feel anything for the building at least it was identifiable.
Once you walk in you are met by Chinese workers who actually do a good job checking why you are there, along with a preliminary check that you have all the paper work. I was missing a photocopy of my old passport page and they issued me a number and pointed me to where I could go get it done.
Walking off to do it I was thinking cool not a lot of people and they are giving tickets. I was however worried cause my ticket number was 876850, I “Sha” hoped it was the last two digits.
Tickets- ticketing systems start from zero daily, giving visitors an indication of where they are on the queue.
8th Floor
Welcome to chaos. The elevator doors opened and getting off was an issue because the line got right to the elevator doors. There were no signs to indicate where or what you needed to do. Remember my ticket- no longer meant anything again. No display, no call out (see later) or direction.
I asked the person closest as I had seen her downstairs earlier and she indicated we had to submit the applications to the one of the two embassy staffs behind the two windows.
Ticketing and display- A simple ticket and display system would have allowed visitors understand where to go and the process. Also having everybody standing in a queue created a larger problem than having them seated and responding to their numbers being called. The size of this floor is another issue, I am not certain if we occupy the whole building but I am aware there were a few other floors. Serious consideration should be given to expanding the current space. Passport renewals represent the bulk of activities in the embassy and should be addressed — Break the process to different flows to help the human flow.
The Nigerian Factor
Rules and multiple forms of communication help most advanced societies stay orderly. The addressee for the postal order was not quite clear and people communicate different names despite a small piece of paper on the other wall saying it and it being on the site. In addition recall my advice to go get photocopies, well seems like some were not informed or just chose to ignore it. So this lead to some strange behaviors, some shouted, caused and even wondered how “a whole Nigerian embassy does not have photocopier” all in the Naija/Yankee fonee. Anyway they just wasted other people’s time and obviously frustrated the folks behind the windows.
I finally made it to the windows and it was pretty straightforward. They verified the documents and payments and collected it. She then said you would wait to get your picture taken.
The Waiting Game
So I was clear what my next task was but had no idea when or how long I had to wait. So I shuttled between outside and 8th floor to take my calls, as it was impossible to take a call on the 8th floor. At this point it was clear to me, l was just stuck here. In an inner room a door will open ever so frequently and names would be called out to come take their pictures and complete their biometrics. However you had no idea in what order this was happening.
At this point I was tempted to find someone who knew someone who knew someone. I actually did try, it just happened I didn’t have New York embassy connect!
Infrastructure
After 3 hours of waiting, my name got called for my picture and biometrics. The personnel that took my picture held a digital camera on his left hand and I assume using the other to accept the image on the system. This process, which also includes the fingerprint input, had only two personnel and two sets of data capture devices. — Now that is just wrong.
There is no reason to wait 3 hours just to get someone take my picture and capture my fingerprints, these are processes that can easily be automated to bring in efficiency and improve the whole process. US airports today have completely autonomous immigration machines that capture your picture, fingerprints and confirm you immigration form. There is no reason why we don’t have a bank of cameras and fingerprint capture devices and the two personnel supervising the process.
The Waiting Game part 2
Okay, so after our completely inefficient picture and fingerprint capture exercise, we moved into the second round of waiting. We were basically shown a piece of paper that said your “passport will be ready for pickup between 3–5 but it might not be ready at 5” At this point the industrious side of Nigerians showed up, someone was selling packaged Killish and there was a Nigerian food truck packed outside the embassy.
Batch vs. Continuous Flow Processing
There is enough study evaluating these two methodologies, to determine which is better, the Nigerian embassy process requires a continuous flow approach. Currently it practices a batch system, which just keeps people waiting with no clear visibility to when your passport will be ready. Its notification that your passport will be available between 3–5 or later also highlights that we have no idea of how long it takes us to process a passport.
Automating more of the process will give us better visibility. One area I heard the staff talk about that delayed the process was “the link to the Nigerian system was down” ok I have no idea what this means but it sounded like each passport has to be registered in the NIS system to validate the passport. We live in an age now where systems should be constantly available and there is no reason why the NIS system is not hosted in the cloud to ensure better reliability and availability. In addition integrating simple services such as SMS notification would also help inform applicants when their passports are ready for pick-up
6pm
Shortly before 6pm, a batch of new passports appears and with no order we all stand up to hear our names being called. I hear mine, pick it up and I am asked to go sign a book placed by the elevator. In the muster, I hear a lady complaining that her name has not been called and she had been there before a number of us whose name had been called. I thought about it — people just walk up to claim a passport based on them claiming it is their name and no verification, so could someone have taken hers, or was it just lost in the non-efficient process currently practiced.
Overall, I have to commend the embassy staff that despite this craziness I was able to get my passport in 1 day, without knowing anybody or shouting. They obviously understand their inefficient and chaotic process but if you take a step back with automation, infrastructure, process flow they can increase their productivity and capacity to not just process more but more importantly improve their quality of life and work experience and avoid me ranting :-)
