I’ve been looking forward to a much needed holiday in the US this November. On Tuesday night, I checked my passport only to discover that it will expire in December this year. As the US requires at least six months validity on the passport, I thought I could hop on the passports website and easily renew my current passport.
Boy oh boy was I wrong. What should have been a quick and painless process turned out to be a case study for a bad user experience.
Having what I thought was a current and valid passport, I selected the Passport Applications menu item, then the Renew option. After following the form flow for a while, I got stuck on the login screen, was eventually locked out and then asked to contact the passport team (the number only works if you call during business hours). When I called the next day, I was told that I can’t renew my current passport as it has less than two years validity (thanks to a name change due to my marriage two years ago). Instead, I’ll have to go through a new passport application.
After going back and being a lot more through with my reading of the extraneous text on the passport website, I discovered that there’s actually a PDF that you have to download and read which contains important information (can you spot it in the image below?). I also discover that despite the page saying that you should use the renewal form if you have a current passport, you still need to find the relevant PDFs on the website, read the instructions in great detail and hope that you have the right form.
This was pretty annoying but I buckled down and tried to work my way through the online new passport application. The first page I get asks a series of questions (as per the following image). Note that the supplementary text for the third question “Do you want to renew your Australian passport?” doesn’t tell you about the less-than-two-years validity rule.
Once you start the form, there is no clear indication of the documentation you need to have to complete the form. As I start completing the form, I soon realise that there’s eleven steps I need to go through. Each step has to be completed before you can move to the next step (which is an absolute pain if you’re trying to work out what documents you need to have prepared BEFORE you get to that step).
The step that’s currently causing the most angst is the citizenship section. I have to prove that I’m an Australian citizen – either via an Australian Birth Certificate (which I don’t have as I’m born overseas) or an original Australian Citizenship Certificate (which I also don’t have as I’m on my parents’ citizenship certificate).
The Citizenship website tells me that I can apply for proof of citizenship, which is a 12 page PDF form, costs $55 (Australian dollars) and will take about 30 days. This is a problem – I leave for the US in less than 30 days.
I call Immigration who tells me that I have two choices – apply for my own citizenship certificate (which won’t arrive in time, unless I can prove that there’s a compassionate reason like death in the family) or use my parents’ original certificate (which is still located on the other side of the country).
The fact that I have a current and valid Australian passport, a Medicare card and the Citizenship Certificate number doesn’t matter. According to the new rules that came into effect on 1st October 2008:
From today, the Australian Passport Office will only accept the new passport applications forms which were introduced on 1 July 2008 to strengthen the identity management process that underpins the Australian passport issuing system.
The new forms better ensure the names included in replacement passports match those recorded on state and territory births, deaths and marriages registers or the Australian citizenship register.
I wonder how they thought I got my original passport?
So to fix up potentially erroneous processes from previous years, the Australian Citizens has to undergo quite a difficult process to apply for a passport. I’m still in the process of applying for a new passport. I’ve asked my parents to send their original certificate through registered mail so I can get it safely and on time. But funnily enough, I’m not the only person to be going through such a bad passport user experience.
Lessons learned?
For Government:
- Map out the entire user experience – the experience can be harder that you think and it’s not just limited to the web!
- Consider a better integration between passports.gov.au, locating an appropriate passport interview venue (some Australian Post offices) and the Immigration department (for proving your Citizenship if required)
- Rewrite your content so it makes sense!!!
For the Citizen:
- Give yourself ample time to renew or apply for a passport, especially if you need to prove your citizenship!
Fingers crossed that I can get everything sorted out in time for my November holiday…
12 comments ↓
God Ruth, it sounds like a total nightmare. Dealing with the government can sometimes be straight out of Kafka.
Hope you get it sorted in time…
I’m sure things will work out. I’ll feel a lot more comfortable once I get my parents certificate in hand.
But I think it’s time for me to go cough up the money and apply for my own citizenship certificate….
Dear Ruth,
I googled passport nightmares and found this! And your advise for the gov’t is right on the mark. They need to map out the experience and consider writing an instruction booklet with references to each section on what is or is not acceptable.
I just became a citizen on 2 Oct. and found out on the 6th that I need to go home (Florida) because my mother is gravely ill. I picked up the application, got the pictures, had a lovely woman complete the guarantor section, took the form in for the interview and found that she had not filled in her birthday. Also I had filled in my name (’cause it’s an easy one to mess up and I only had one form). Rejected! She didn’t fill in her birthday and no one but the guarantor can fill in anything in the guarantor section. Okay, it says @ the top, to be filled in by the guarantor. But then the interviewer says to have her fill in the “0″ before any single digit dates. Now that is not in the instructions and no where on the form.
So, being good and knowing I can’t fake her handwriting, I make the 45 minute drive back to her town with a new form, which she starts to fill out in blue ink! “Oh, no”, I say. “It must be in BLACK INK.” She carefully writes over the blue ink in black and we check each box is filled where needed.
Next day (day 3 of this drama now), I take it back to the P.O. And again, REJECTED! Why? Because she over-wrote the first section in black. “What’s wrong with that?” I say. “She should have initialled it”, he says. Now THAT instruction is no where on the form or in the instructions. But he’ll call and check with passport dept. No, they tell him, she should have crossed it out and re-written in the blanks left. So now I have two corrections that should have been made by the guarantor and NO INSTRUCTIONS ON THESE CORRECTIONS IN WRITING ANYWHERE IN THE FORM’S INSTRUCTIONS!
I asked where is the direction for these corrections. No cogent answer. Now I’m pissed off. My mom is dying in Florida and we’re quibbling about blue and black ink and the passport experts can’t even agree on how the overwriting error should have been corrected.
I called the passport dept and got Michelle, who had the nerve to say it would have been better to have left it in Blue Ink!! Huh? But, she says, the correct correction would have been to cross out the mistake, initial it and then rewrite it in the blank spaces available in Black Ink. I suggested that maybe they should consider putting out a booklet on how to complete each section of the form if they are going to be so precise about what they are and aren’t going to accept. She said that they don’t put instructions on making corrections because they don’t want mistakes made. They must live in a perfect world. Or don’t care about people in the real one. I’m betting on the latter.
So I’ve gotten a very nice man to complete my third try at the quarantor section of the form. I’ve looked it over and I believe that he’s done everything correctly. But I won’t be surprised if there’s something wrong. And that it is something not addressed by the directions. Tomorrow it will be day 5 of this mess, and I had expected I would have my passport by then. The people kind enough to fill these forms for me are both professionals born and raised in Tasmania and I hope I don’t have to bother them again for the government’s lack of clear instructions in this area.
Wish me luck.
R Lazdins
Oh Robyn, what an absolute nightmare! I’m so sorry to hear about your mum and the passport nightmare. I hope everything works out for you and that you have a safe trip to the US and back!
Hi Ruth,
We also have similar problem to renew my husband Australian passport, we not able to continue it saying your information is not matching please check again. After tried and tried again we gave it up. to ring 131 1232 not getting anywhere. Now how can we renew the passport or to get the blank form?
I wish you will tell the story to current affair or today to night about passport nightmare.
I signed my son’s renewal passport application while I was in Australia only to find that it was rejected as my signiture went outside the sign box. Now I am in Guinea and no way of resigning it so the passport can be processed. My wife and son are planning to travel on the 28th May. If I do the application on line it renders her application useless. What I need is a blank form so I can sign the back page so it can be processed.
I came across this site by accident, and while I can relate to the stories, they all seem so avoidable and easily explained. Im planning a trip overseas with my girlfriend who has no passport. She was adopted at a young age, so also has no birth certificate. After a brief bit of checking, we managed to obtain the original birth certificate from BDM (in 3 weeks instead of the 5-7 quoted).
So many of the problems in these comments, seem avoidable.
If you dont have sufficient information to complete the form you simply click the ’save’ button and the website will put your application on hold until you CAN obtain the relevant details.
The passport site and passport form explain in great detail what identification requirements are required, and in our case even provided links to the BDM website to obtain replacement documents.
As for over-writing in a different color, when the mistake should have been initialed, I thought this was common knowledge? I remember first being taught the importance of it as a child when I made a mistake on my dollarmite deposit form at the bank. Cross out and initial. Even if you dont think its required, its (apparently not) commonsense to do it anyway.
But, I think the biggest problem that seems to be shown here, is people thinking they can get a passport from start to finish rapidly. While the internet has made some things in life easier and faster, I hope that for our nations sake, our government continues to be picky about passport and immigration issues. Im sure if you explained this issue to a 60 year old, that you couldnt get a passport in under a month theyd look at you like a kid of the computer generation. To anyone not raised in the 90s, get used to the fact forms take time to process through government.
Im not saying they should be picky about going outside the line or using the wrong color ink, but Im sure if you tried to deposit a cheque that youd over-written in a different color, youd expect to have issues with it too? Or would you expect to be able to fill in a cheque with crayons and argue when its rejected?
I just saw at the top of this page, Ruth you live in Canberra? You are aware that the Australian passport office for the southern hemisphere is located in Barton? They should be more accomodating of any issues than the post office will be, and at the very least will have spare forms and information to hand.
I also wonder, living in the nations capital, with over 300,000 people, why did you have to drive almost an hour to find someone who knew you to fill in the form, that sounds like making more work for yourself just for the sake of it.
David M, you seem to be missing the point being made in this blog. It’s about the overall user experience and good design, not whether a user can navigate their way successfully through and win the ‘I’m so good’ award. Ruth, as a User Experience professional, was commenting on the overal user experience and poor design.
Good design will eliminate basic hurdles by informing the user of the required information before they initiate a process – thereby avoiding the need to save and return (often repeatedly). For example, place warning messages in each section: “To complete this section you will need 5 documents: 1. xxx, 2. xxx …”
There were other points made in the original blog that refer to usability and interaction design principles – these serve as reminders that forms are complex and should be designed properly.
I’m sure that Ruth knows that there is an office in Canberra but when completing a form online, a user should not be required to attend an office to compensate for poor design and lack of integration between government departments.
Hi guys, the saga continues… i tried to go through the renew a passport process… on the third page it asks for the name of the guarantor… that was 7 years ago!!! are we really expected to remember that???
well i guess they met their Outcome test of having online renewals… eGovernment and all… just a pity it is not actually very usable… der…
I recently went through the process of renewing my passport. In my case it was simple. I did fill in and print the PDF document, went and got new photos and lodged the rewewal at the post office. About 5 or 6 days later my new passport arrived.
A key to this was that I was renew the passport while it was still current. That cuts out a lot of pain as you don’t need the documentation required for a initial passport issue. Even if it has expired in the past 12 months, it is simpler than if it expired more than 12 months ago.
Ruth’s situation was complicated by her name change. But for simpler cases, the process does seem to work.
As for the website and the general process flow, it is not wonderful. Perhaps continuous improvement is the best we can hope for…
Thanks for your comments everyone.
@Andrew – you’re right, the situation was complicated by my name change but was further complicated by the then-new rule changes. What made the experience so frustrating was that I actually had a current passport.
The problem was around the labelling used on the website. As a user, I was expecting to ‘renew’ my passport rather than apply for a new passport.
But as you mentioned, the idea of continuous improvement is a good pragmatic approach for Government.
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