lubob said:
Dear Wayne ! if you were in my place , then what constructive suggestions u could offer to CHC to speed up the processing of files ? regards
Do you mean CIC or CHC?
CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) is the entire organisation whereas CHC (Canadian High Commission) is just the local visa office?
I believe the message the guys are intending to send is for CIC generally. But I guess I have a few ideas on how processing across the board could be improved:
1) Allow people to set up an "account" online - pay their processing fees prior to sending their application. Let them create it with a unique email address which can be validated and then you can get ID number which you write on your application envelope prior to mailing it. Then when you application arrives they just flag your account as being application received and you know immediately that they received your application ok. Also no more waiting for fees to be taken (and the worry about payment going wrong) since you've already paid.
2) Fill in application online - Taking the above one step further, allow the application to be completely filled in online (would mean considerable development though having an interface to complete each form so this is probably more of a long-term idea). The applicant has to fill in the form anyway, so rather than filling it in on a PDF document, why not fill it in online on their account? Then when CIC review the application they can just refer to the online form, and this would also save them having to manually enter all the information (and reduce the degree of human error therein).
3) Improve ECAS - expose more of the GCMS/CAIPS fields onto ECAS so people can get a more granular view of their applications. It shouldn't be necessary to order CAIPS notes - that information should be reliably available to applicant on ECAS.
4) Better communication - all visa offices should better communicate their work patterns and timescales. A few minutes each week of one person's time updating a page on their website with the current situation would relieve stress from applicants and save CHC a lot of man-hours in answering individual queries about the status of applications.
5) More granular and relevant view of application numbers. Currently CIC have said a blanket 1000 maxmimum FSW applications per NOC. I believe they should do more research and actually bring out a unique total per NOC, based on the actual demand for that role. For example, the actual demand for one NOC may be far higher than another, even though both NOCs are "in demand" the degrees to which they are in demand will differ. Then, as well as inviting new applicants, they can also process on a priority basis EXISTING applicants which match those NOCs - up to the maximum cap they set for each NOC.
6) Better application management - have clear targets at the start of the year that they will process X new applications and Y backlog applications and make it very clear to applicants which they are processing. I guess this also ties in with better communication.
7) Increase resource - in order to help tackle the backlog they could increase their resources, at least temporarily. They make enough money from this so it's not like they cannot afford it. With this comes the caveat that they have to be careful not to allow too many applicants who are not within in-demand occupations within any one year (goes back to the notion of not wanting to flood or negatively impact the Canadian job market).
These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. By capping the applications received CIC have already made a big step to reduce and eventually remove the backlog, and also by sending all documents up-front they are speeding up processing times and removing "time waster" applications who cannot provide sufficient supporting documents.
But there are still a number of improvements which can be made in my view to further improve things - faster processing times and much better communication to the applications can be achieved with some or all of the suggestions I made above. Some of these are really quick wins which would not be very difficult to implement (such as a dedicated page on visa office's web site with their current work patterns/workloads and estimate timescales, updated weekly).
Wayne.