Right now there are lots of people wondering where there interview notification is. They submitted their DS260 months ago and have a low case number – but still they wait. The explanation below is one I gave in response to this same question.

The cases are scheduled according to the case numbers becoming current within any given month. However no case can be scheduled until that case has been processed. Processing means data is checked, certain background checks are performed and so on. In the latter half of DV2014 cases, that processing took less than 4 weeks – in other words, the actual processing doesn’t take very long.

However, DV2015 was the first DV year where the DS260 has been used. That may have introduced delays in the process because staff would have had to re-learn how to process these cases (new systems, perhaps additional data and so on). That delay was compounded by some other factors. First, the first date anyone could submit their forms was May 19th (which lost nearly three weeks of time before the first interviews were scheduled in August (for October interview dates). By that time there were many people (who had been told to file their forms quickly) who would have submitted those forms almost immediately. So – let’s just imagine that of the 125,000 selectees, perhaps half of them would have submitted in the first few days. It is clear that KCC have not prioritized the processing based on case number – they seem to have worked on date of form submission (which is normal). Each case needed to be processed, with a new way of working so they seem to have been taking around 3 months to process cases. This is perhaps longer in some cases where background checks are harder due to poor availability of data – so some cases are taking 4 months. There has also been a lot of form unlocking so a lot of those forms submitted early on have been unlocked as people rushed their entries and then realized they made mistakes. That unlocking is a drain on the resources of KCC as is the number of people phone KCC every 3 days asking “am I going to get an interview soon”.

So there was a backlog of work, due to a late start, a slower system, and of course the immediacy of an entry submitted on the web. That backlog is being cleared (because by now the majority of the 125k will have submitted their forms), so in a few months time I expect the speed of processing to be reduced – but for now, we just need to be a bit more patient.

The problem is so large by the way that I am thinking this slow start could have an impact to visa bulletin progression for a few months as they will have underutilized the embassies around the world…

I also wrote about the longer term impacts in this post.

 

 

DV2015 2NL