How is technology changing visa application processing ?
Visa is an emotive word in Ghana. Tens of thousands of Ghanaians interact annually with foreign embassies in Ghana in order to seek visa for travel. A lot of stories unfold in the process.
One remarkable one is about a young student who was going to pursue further studies abroad. He stated in his application that he was a 100-metre runner. The visa-processing officer requested the applicant to meet him at a school close to the embassy at the weekend. With a timer and whistle in hand, he asked the applicant to run 100 metres. Luckily, the applicant “ran for his life” and came out with flying colours leading to the issuance of a visa. Fast forward today, visa application processes at most embassies in Ghana are heavily rely on technology to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. In our example above, the visa processing officer will rather be checking on social media postings of this applicant to check for evidence of his running abilities instead of doing this face to face.
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Visa processing starts nowadays with the booking of a slot for an interview or submission of forms. In former years, applicants have to wake up at the crack of dawn to go and queue. This situation led to “stone contractors” who reserved places in the queue with stones for a fee. Today, applicants cannot only book a slot online but can fill out the whole application form online and make payments as well without making any physical contact with the embassy in question, except with an outsourced third party who is tasked to take applicants biometric information on the embassy’s behalf.
Visa processing and algorithms
Automation such as we are discussing is usually used by the embassies to process low-risk visa application, high volume, low-complexity cases since for security and fraud related reasons, some applications have to go through rigorous human scrutiny. It is very difficult to measure variables which go into the visa application decision making process. There is no doubt that it is more a subjective process than an objective procedure.However, there are some elements in the application process which lend themselves to objectivity; for instance, the number of countries applicants have visited, their educational status, income level, employment etc. Using computer software, an applicant’s filled form is subjected to rankings with the objective of granting visas to high scoring applicants against pre-determined indicators. This means the process is becoming increasingly less subjective.
One area which is also seeing the use of technology is the customer care during the visa application process, including call centres and online track and trace system for applicant to be able to check on the status of their application.
The advantages of using technology are numerous, including cost savings for the embassy, better experience and time savings for the applicants. However, there is a risk of hacking, whereby a person can gain unauthorised access to the system and grant visa to an applicant who may not normally qualify.
Visa processing using technology is now a big business
Majority of embassies rely on technology to assist them in processing visa applications so as to effectively deal with the overwhelming number of applications, with some going as far as outsourcing all manual processes except the final decision making which legally requires a sign off by an embassy staff.
This increase in the use of technology in visa processing has impacted business and opened up a new market with a lot of players offering varied types of visa delivery services. Interestingly, some of these companies charge fees which are sometimes twice the amount payable for the actual cost of visa issuance by the embassy.