State Department denies passports will be slow in '08

By The Associated Press

Published: July 26, 2008

WASHINGTON — The State Department insisted Friday it can handle the growing demand for passports, despite congressional investigators' findings that the agency has not overhauled the system to avoid repeating last summer's backlog fiasco.

The State Department has not developed a "comprehensive, long-term strategy” to modernize its passport application process, according to a report issued Friday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Lawmakers had requested an investigation into the backlog that swamped passport offices last spring and summer, the result of an unprecedented 18 million applications. The high demand was spurred in part by new U.S. travel rules.

"The 2007 surge in passport demand exposed serious deficiencies in State's passport issuance process,” the report says. "Passport wait times reached record highs, leading to inconvenience and frustration for many thousands of Americans.”

The department "needs to rethink its entire end-to-end passport issuance process, including each of the entities involved in issuing a passport, and develop a formal strategy for prioritizing and implementing improvements to this process,” according to the investigators.

State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said he had not seen the report and could not comment in detail but he said the department has already made several changes meant to improve passport delivery. There is no similar backlog this year, he said.

"There was a situation last year. We worked very diligently to ensure that we developed a more efficient system in processing passports, one that had a much greater capacity.” Gallegos said.

The need for a top-to-bottom review is urgent, the agency said, because the demand for passports is expected to keep soaring in coming years.

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