I let a couple of comments about waste of resources go, so I want to clarify something I learned. When I had my interview, I specifically asked the case officer if she personally had to deal with requests for electronic notes, since it has come up in threads here. She said that requests for electronic notes are handled by a department all it's own, so the case officers, people processing applications, are not impacted.
I do recognize that I'm keeping someone busy, but not bogging down processing of applications.
Unnecessary, and especially frivolous demands on government resources, have a negative impact on all government services. This tends to compromise the quality and promptness of services for everyone else.
Within a particular department, such as IRCC, resources are particularly limited, both as to funding and personnel. Any unnecessary demand on any part of IRCC has a negative impact on the resources available for allocation to other functions.
BUT of course your individual requests do not have much of an impact. It is the net effect when many individuals are making unnecessary or frivolous demands on services which poses real problems.
Example: There is a reason why IRCC politely requests citizenship applicants to NOT request their CBSA travel history, but rather simply give IRCC consent to access those records directly. That reason is clearly to reduce the demand on CBSA caused by unnecessary requests. Because excessive demands can seriously erode and compromise service. In fact this happened during the huge surge in RQ following the implementation of OB 407 and applicants were (initially) asked to obtain and submit a CBSA history . . . which almost immediately came close to crashing CBSA's capacity to provide such records. By 2013 CIC modified the RQ to include obtaining consent from applicants rather than asking applicants to obtain and submit the records themselves (it was later, but I do not recall which version of the application form it was, CIC began including the CBSA travel history consent in the application as well).
A more salient and closer-to-home example, for many forum participants, is the extent to which it appears many are calling the IRCC help line asking questions about AOR and IP and such, even though their application has not even been at IRCC six months let alone a year. This specific resource is almost always burdened by excessive demands, unnecessary queries, and as many forum participants can easily attest, it often makes it very difficult for those who have real questions to get through. For an immigrant with a full time day job, getting the time to make these calls can be very limited. I have been accused of being overly judgmental about those who are calling the help line to find out why three months have gone by since AOR and they are not yet scheduled for the test, BUT dammmmit there are so many struggling to figure things out and trying to get a call through, and for them not getting through, or having to sit on hold for lengthy periods of time, is a real and serious hardship. Railing against rampant impatience and selfish narcissism is not about making moralizing judgments, it is about asking others to be considerate and reasonable and to recognize there are applicants with pressing questions being negatively affected.
I do not mean to discourage help line calls or ATIP applications when there are real reasons for them. And over time some forum participants are genuinely engaged in an effort to acquire more information through these applications so they can better understand the process and in turn provide information and insight to others, to help others better navigate the process. (There was a lot of this in 2012 and 2013, for example, when we were all struggling to get a handle on the impact of OB 407, which was causing many thousands of applicants to suffer non-routine processing and delays taking as long as two or even three years; and the information obtained and shared was indeed useful; indeed, a lot of my understanding of the process derives from both ATIP and ATI applications during that period of time.)
BUT I'd like to politely discourage casual, unnecessary, or frivolous, including the more or less merely curious, abuses of the ATIP process as well as the help centre telephone lines. The vast majority of forum participants are in this together (or here to help others who are in it together). The exercise of some patience and reason and consideration for others is something to be encouraged. One unnecessary ATIP application makes no difference. But when a lot of applicants are doing it, it adds up, and it will divert the allocation of resources, it will have a negative impact on the quality of service and especially the timeline.
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