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I went through this process the other day with an expired passport and it took two weeks from submitting my documents online to getting a new passport and passp

I went through this process the other day with an expired passport and it took two weeks from submitting my documents online to getting a new passport and passport card. I had paid for expedited processing and shipping. Overall a great experience.

Aaargh20318 4y ago
That sounds like a terrible experience to be honest. Two weeks for the expedited procedure ? The normal procedure here (Netherlands) takes 5 working days. If you pay for the expedited procedure and you order one before 14:00 you can pick up your passport the next day after 10:00.
- cosentiyes 4y ago
  I don't think 2-5 (if not expedited) weeks is too unreasonable for something you need to do once every 10 years. I have no idea what is actually entailed in the process, but maybe population size accounts for the timing difference. As another comment said, if you really need it rushed (ie have a valid reason) and your passport has not expired, the time is as short as 3 days.
  - Aaargh20318 4y ago
    I don’t see how population size would affect it. You’d need more capacity to print them, but that’s just throughput. I don’t see why it should affect latency. They basically need to print it and bind it into a booklet. When you order one you have to provide a new photo and fingerprint scan, but that is sent digitally. All the other data they need they just take from the citizen registry database.
    - cosentiyes 4y ago
      There's obviously some tradeoff between hiring more people to process and verify an increased number of applications at faster throughput. Shipping times from DE/DC to CA are probably longer than coast-to-coast in the Netherlands, etc. At the end of the day, 5 weeks standard, 2 weeks priority, and X days rushed are perfectly reasonable turnarounds for a process that only needs to be done once every ten years. Uploading my documents took <10 minutes and I wouldn't have needed it any faster. This is a far stretch from "terrible" and optimizing it for more capacity is probably a waste of resources.
      - Aaargh20318 4y ago
        > There's obviously some tradeoff between hiring more people to process and verify an increased number of applications at faster throughput. But that’s the thing. You need a certain throughput, and it shouldn’t affect the wait time. If you get X passport applications per day, and you can only produce less than X per day, your wait times will keep increasing over time. So at the minimum you need the same amount of production capacity as you have applications, preferably a little bit more. Assuming this is the case, then there must be something else causing the delays. Sure, there can be a small queue due to fluctuating orders but surely not 5 weeks ? So there are two possibilities: either it actually takes weeks to manufacture the document, which seems odd, or it only takes a couple of minutes but there is some reason it takes 5 weeks before production is started. > Shipping times from DE/DC to CA are probably longer than coast-to-coast in the Netherlands, etc. Shipping for pretty much everything in the Netherlands is next-day. But I see no reason why you have to ship from the other side of the country. You can run a big country as if it was a collection of small countries. Isn’t that kind of what US states are anyway ? You have 20 times the number of people as the Netherlands, why not have 20 production facilities spread around the country ?
        cosentiyes 4y ago
        > If you get X passport applications per day submissions and throughput fluctuate and the quoted times are obviously estimates based on what the government has decided is a reasonable expected value for their target opex spend given historic application rates. I don't see why it's surprising that they chose some target timeline and staffed accordingly. > why not have 20 production facilities spread around the country ? because that's horribly inefficient and there's not point in spending resources to bring down a perfectly reasonable renewal time for a once-a-decade process

Aaargh20318 4y ago

That sounds like a terrible experience to be honest. Two weeks for the expedited procedure ? The normal procedure here (Netherlands) takes 5 working days. If you pay for the expedited procedure and you order one before 14:00 you can pick up your passport the next day after 10:00.

cosentiyes 4y ago
I don't think 2-5 (if not expedited) weeks is too unreasonable for something you need to do once every 10 years. I have no idea what is actually entailed in the process, but maybe population size accounts for the timing difference. As another comment said, if you really need it rushed (ie have a valid reason) and your passport has not expired, the time is as short as 3 days.
- Aaargh20318 4y ago
  I don’t see how population size would affect it. You’d need more capacity to print them, but that’s just throughput. I don’t see why it should affect latency. They basically need to print it and bind it into a booklet. When you order one you have to provide a new photo and fingerprint scan, but that is sent digitally. All the other data they need they just take from the citizen registry database.
  - cosentiyes 4y ago
    There's obviously some tradeoff between hiring more people to process and verify an increased number of applications at faster throughput. Shipping times from DE/DC to CA are probably longer than coast-to-coast in the Netherlands, etc. At the end of the day, 5 weeks standard, 2 weeks priority, and X days rushed are perfectly reasonable turnarounds for a process that only needs to be done once every ten years. Uploading my documents took <10 minutes and I wouldn't have needed it any faster. This is a far stretch from "terrible" and optimizing it for more capacity is probably a waste of resources.
    - Aaargh20318 4y ago
      > There's obviously some tradeoff between hiring more people to process and verify an increased number of applications at faster throughput. But that’s the thing. You need a certain throughput, and it shouldn’t affect the wait time. If you get X passport applications per day, and you can only produce less than X per day, your wait times will keep increasing over time. So at the minimum you need the same amount of production capacity as you have applications, preferably a little bit more. Assuming this is the case, then there must be something else causing the delays. Sure, there can be a small queue due to fluctuating orders but surely not 5 weeks ? So there are two possibilities: either it actually takes weeks to manufacture the document, which seems odd, or it only takes a couple of minutes but there is some reason it takes 5 weeks before production is started. > Shipping times from DE/DC to CA are probably longer than coast-to-coast in the Netherlands, etc. Shipping for pretty much everything in the Netherlands is next-day. But I see no reason why you have to ship from the other side of the country. You can run a big country as if it was a collection of small countries. Isn’t that kind of what US states are anyway ? You have 20 times the number of people as the Netherlands, why not have 20 production facilities spread around the country ?
      - cosentiyes 4y ago
        > If you get X passport applications per day submissions and throughput fluctuate and the quoted times are obviously estimates based on what the government has decided is a reasonable expected value for their target opex spend given historic application rates. I don't see why it's surprising that they chose some target timeline and staffed accordingly. > why not have 20 production facilities spread around the country ? because that's horribly inefficient and there's not point in spending resources to bring down a perfectly reasonable renewal time for a once-a-decade process