I have a friend who worked in a process driven company and they spent an inordinate amount time each day updating the applications they were dealign with various points in the process but it actually took a lot of time out from actually assessing the applications and doing the checks they needed to do to finish the job. And as it slowed things down they then got lots of complaints ...

A new manager stopped that by reducing the number of processing points that needed to be recorded and productivity soared.

But with GE there are likely to be dozens of processes / data sources involved that applicants might want to know about but don't need to know about and can do nothing about expediting even if they did. And GE processing also needs non federal government organisations to provide data and query resolution and it may not be on top of the AnyState Court House priority list to sort out which of two people with the same name was the criminal and which wasn't. Heck it's likely not on any federal courts clerical workers list either and it'll get done next week when Shona is back from holiday etc etc