What doesn't help processing speed for those who need passports still is that the passport agency doesn't know where people want to travel, just their travel date.
The destination countries and dates of travel *are* listed on the application form. However, there is no indication that the State Department uses that information at all.
What that means is that people like me who were getting nervous about not receiving passports for summer vacations in Canada/Mexico/Caribbean will now *NOT* be jamming the tollfree number, their congressmen, or lining up infront of the Passport office trying to get their passports.
I suppose...it makes it easier to escalate issues when they arise. But it doesn't reduce the application volume (it may actually increase it now that the story is getting big time publicity). Since Passport Services doesn't have an efficient workflow system to process applications in a priority of order received/time of travel, it still means that it is likely that many travelers will need to push and push to get their passports.
There were a couple of stories on NPR tonight:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=10876269
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=6952536
NPR re-played a quotation from spokesperson for State back last year who said that processing times wouldn't increase at all because they were extremely prepared, etc., etc.
It really seems as though it would have been possible to look at figures for the number of US citizens entering via airports without passports and get a pretty good estimate as to the number of passport applications that might be expected. That doesn't seem to have happened.