The more I think about this the more astounded I am how this has been handled – and I am beginning to wonder what the long term impacts will be…

DV2015 is the first year to use the DS-260 form for entry. Previous years required the selectee to submit some simple paperwork (DS-122 and DS-230). The switch to the new forms has caused several issues.

  1. The starting date of using the new form was May 19 – so that was at least two weeks of lost processing time.
  2. The DS-260 retained a number of non DV relevant questions that caused much concern and would have presented additional worry/stress for selectees.
  3. The majority of selectees submit their forms as soon as possible, so there is a flood of initial applications to process. I can understand that would normally cause some longer processing times but we are still hearing from some people that their forms are still processing almost 4 months after initial submission. That is worse (much worse) than the old system! This delay resulted in many interviews being delayed to later months that should have been scheduled in October or November.
  4. Some embassies have been unable to process early interviews due to not be able to access the new electronic forms. This has caused early October interviews to be pushed back.

I’m in IT. I know that “change” sometimes causes a settling in period and some delays, but this particular roll out has been very badly handled.

 

It is too early to know if we will pay a longer term price for the delays introduced by the switch to the new process, but even to this point is is clear this was a SNAFU* on a scale that only a government could create.

 

* SNAFU = Situation Normal, All F@#$% Up