I created this presentation to illustrate the many steps a passport application takes, and the intensely manual process we were looking to improve. I’ve adapted it a bit, but it still reflects the approach we were taking at the start of the second phase of the the 18F/Consular Affairs passport adjudication project.
You need a passport
You are here, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. You a college student, and are going on a trip for spring break in four months to Montreal, and you need to get your first passport.
To translate that into passport requirements:
- You’ve never had a passport before, so you’re going to need to use the DS-11 form, and apply IN PERSON.
- Your travel isn’t urgent, so you don’t have to drive to a passport center (which for you, would be El Paso, TX, about a 4 hour drive each way)
- You’re not a minor (under 14), so you can apply for yourself
Acceptance facility
There are 26 passport agencies across the country, but there are many more acceptance facilities, mostly in public spaces like post offices and libraries.
You have to go there to submit the application. They’re not making any decisions, but are witnesses and do some basic checks to make sure the application is complete.
So you …
- Make an appointment at an acceptance facility
- Fill out DS-11
- Get a photo taken
- Gather your evidence – your driver’s license (for your ID), and your original birth certificate (for citizenship)
- Attend the appointment
- Pay fees, show them your ID, sign application with them as witness, and hand over the paperwork, including a check to pay for the passport, and that original birth certificate (no copies allowed)
The facility gathers all its applications, and sends them off to lockbox.
Lockbox
“Lockbox” refers to two centralized depots that start the processing of an application.
At lockbox, staff
- Cash checks
- Scan the first page of the application for tracking
- Do data entry (manually, if you hand-wrote the application)
- Bag and box applications
- Ships box based on distribution instructions from DC
The passport office in dc makes decisions on a weekly basis about how many boxes go where based on how much an agency has already, any staff issues (vacations, etc.)
Could theoretically be sent to any of the centers around the country, but most go to the National Passport Center (NPC).
National passport center
The National Passport Center (NPC) in New Hampshire processes around 80% of passport applications.
Facial recognition
At the same time, the scan of the photo is sent to the Kentucky Consular Center (KCC) in Williamsburg, Kentucky.
There, the photo is compared to the facial recognition database. Facial recognition specialists review matches, and either clear them or pass them along to passport adjudicators.
Mail open
Once the Lockbox delivery arrives at the passport agency, it starts in the Mail Open department.
They open the boxes from Lockbox, remove a bag, and process the paper applications.
The paperclip
Processing the application means taking it apart and putting the pages back together in a very specific order. This order may change agency to agency.
- First page of the application
- Evidence
- Primary legal documents first
- Photocopies after
- Second page of the application
- A colored sheet of paper
The papers are held together with a huge, 3 inch paperclip, attached to the side of the packet. The paperclip is important, because the adjudicator will move it to the top, indicating the application has been processed.
Batches and boxes
The reorganized applications go in a box, which represents a “batch.” Each batch has around 30 applications, all of the same type.
Those boxes are placed on shelves around the office and ordered left to right, top to bottom, showing the priority.
Adjudication
An adjudicator goes to a shelf, grabs a box, brings it back to their desk, scans the barcode, dumps out the applications, and starts working through them.
Adjudicators are the people adjudicating passport applications. They’re looking at applications for three things:
- Citizenship (Are you US born? Naturalized?)
- Identity (Are you who you say you are?)
- Entitlement (Are you entitled to a passport? Do you have any history or holds that would stop you from getting one?)
Suspense
Oh no! There’s something wrong with your application!
About 12% of passport applications go into “suspense” meaning that there’s something wrong with them and adjustments need to be made before the application can be reviewed. The majority of these are problems with photos.
When an adjudicator “suspends” a case, it means that you’re going to get a Information Request Letter (IRL). But those come from the communications department, so the adjudicator has to pass it off.
They take the application out of their batch, and fill out an IRL slip which indicates what the letter should be about, adds instructions, and if any forms should be sent.
That slip gets added to the case by using the paperclip, and the adjudicator puts the case in a different box, on a different shelf.
Sending the letter
Communications goes to a shelf, grabs a box, brings it back to their desk, scans the barcode, dumps out the applications, and starts working through them.
Using word macros, the communications staff assemble the letter, reformat it, print it, and mail it.
If you provide an email, most letters also can be sent as an eIRL, meaning the PDF of the written letter is attached to an email… and the email is also printed and attached to the case.
The paper goes in a filing cabinet, awaiting a response.
Fixing the issue
Assuming that you get the letter, read it, and understand it, hopefully you reply and send in a better photo.
Receive the reply
Your reply makes it way back to New Hampshire.
The people in the communications office get your letter, find your case in the cabinet, attach the new information, and put it in a “applicant response” batch box.
Re-review
Adjudicator assigned to work on applicant responses goes to a shelf, grabs a box, brings it back to their desk, scans the barcode, dumps out the applications, and starts working through them.
They are going to review the case and the new information, and assuming that the new picture is OK and we don’t have to repeat the whole process, makes a decision.
Yay you! Approved!
Off to print
Once the adjudicator approves it, the case is digitally transferred to the print center.
Individual offices can print passports, but most come from print centers. The Arkansas Passport Center (APC) in Hot Springs, Arkansas, is one of the big ones.
The physical application, with original evidence, stays at the passport office for now.
Printed and mailed
The print center prints the passport. They do quality control checks to make sure that the chips work, and to look for any errors or print issues.
They use USPS Priority Mail to send the passport to you.
But we’re not quite done yet…
Evidence return
The passport office still has your physical application. Most of it will be scanned for archiving and then destroyed, but you need your original evidence back.
The office prints an address label, and sends your documents back via via first class mail.
AND NOW YOU’RE DONE!
A long way to go
This journey covered six locations across five states, with 14 handoffs, and covered over 11,000 miles.
If we take out digital transfers, it’s still almost 9,000 miles.
In 2024, the State Department issued about 20 million passports.
In any given year, about 60% of applications are for new passports, and 40% are renewals of existing passports.
About 12% of applications have some kind of issue that requires sending a letter.
That means that about 3 million passport applications took the journey we just went through.
Renewing online
Online Passport Renewal (OPR) makes a big impact. It can’t handle all renewals yet — it is limited to a smaller range of dates, and you can’t change your name. But it is a shorter journey.
You submit online, it is digitally transferred through facial recognition and the adjudicator and then back to the print center, who mails it across a few states to you.
- In 2024 764,000 renewals (10% of renewals, 4% of totals)
- State estimates that up to 5 million Americans will be able to use the OPR annually (and they’re trying to expand the pool of who qualifies.)
- Still means 14 million PAPER applications would need to be processed.
So we’re not out of the woods yet….and probably won’t be for a long time.
The rest of the presentation focused on the work 18F was doing on the internal system at Consular Affairs. Read more about the 18F/Consular Affairs passport adjudication project.
TDIS = Travel Document Issuance System
Today, one monolithic application called TDIS does everything to process and print passports.
It was developed in the mid-90s and is completely decentralized, handled through on-premises servers at each office. It was built for and around an all-paper world.
And that didn’t and couldn’t change quickly to accommodate online renewals.
- Adjudicators were using empty boxes to represent the batches of online applications, because they weren’t visible in the system.
- Since TDIS doesn’t capture and display all the application information, a pre-service was put in place that creates a PDF of the paper version of the application.
- There’s no process in TDIS to move digital applications between departments, so if the case needed to be given to communications to produce a letter, the PDF would be printed.
Modernization and OCAM
A 10-year modernization project piloted in 2022, and had to be rolled back after causing massive backlogs. Consular Affairs realized that the effort was simply too large.
Even the 2024 launch of the online renewal program was supposed to include both the public side and the internal processing, but was scaled back to just the public process.
America Has Pulled Off the Impossible. It Made Getting a Passport Simple. (WSJ, July 4, 2025)
18F came to Consular Affairs to dig into the internal systems that manage passports once they’ve been submitted.
Say hello to OCAM 👋👋👋
Online Consular Adjudication Module (pronounced “Occam”, like the razor)
OCAM will be a new module that handles for the adjudication part of the process – an adjudicator getting a case, reviewing it, and making a decision (and maybe resolving some issues, but TBD).
At first, it’ll be focused on processing just online renewals. It also will be a cloud-based, centralized system.
And most importantly, it will be built for a digital paradigm, not a paper one.
This will have a lot of benefits, one of which is being able to recover when things go very very wrong.
When you have a paper application to work with, it’s a safe assumption that once that THING is in a PLACE … it stays there. And since this was a process built for paper, that idea remains true, even for digital applications.
So when an ice storm knocked out power to NPC, work completely stopped, even on online applications, because they couldn’t be accessed remotely.
Or when hurricanes battered New Orleans, not only did work stop, but there was a danger of thousands of applications and documents being irrevocably lost.
We’re just getting started… but hopefully this be a new way of working that eventually can alleviate some of the issues with paper applications as well.