Originally Posted by
Section 107
Yes, it is mostly for efficiency that different offices handle different parts of the process (receiving the old pp, sending out the new pp, etc). Why so many offices? Well, they process on the order of 22,000,000 applications per year. Almost 2,000,000 per month. That would be one huge center if all were done at one place. So they have many regional centers to smooth out the load and reduce postal delivery times. Also for security - if something happens at one location (fire, tornado, physical plant / maintenance issues, etc) processing can continue - dont put all your eggs in one basket, yes?
The expired passport gets scanned into electronic storage - so it needs separate processing/handling completely different from that needed to produce a new book.
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Yes, the natural (or other) disaster concern is well-founded. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina flooded the New Orleans processing center (which at the time processed about 17% of passport applications). The applications and documents were, fortunately, recovered, but delays in processing occurred, and new (i.e., post-Katrina) applications had to be re-routed to other offices.
