Another Online Government Fail
I needed a long-form birth certificate to renew my daughter’s passport, so I went onto the Ontario government website, filled in the form, ticked the box saying “regular delivery (15 business days)”, gave them my credit card information, and clicked “submit”. Three days later I get a letter:
Dear Applicant,
Upon review of your application or request, additional information is required.
The payment that has been received is not sufficient to pay for the products and services that you requested. Please forward a further payment of $10.00 so that the ORG can continue processing your request.
Huh? I filled in their form—they calculated how much I owe. And they have my email address—why send a printed letter? Government 2.0 feels like it’s still a long way away…
For comparison: Russian Consulate in Toronto is very proud to be environmentally friendly – just recently they finally made a transition to an online system for passport renewing. You are now asked to fill out an online form and then you are get a nicely formatted pdf back, but here’s the kick: you still to come to the consulate general to pay the fee and submit (3)! copies of that pdf document printed :]
Forms and credit card payment have been around for a long time, sounds like Government 1.0 is still a ways away!
wrt the letter, remember that even in this day and age, the vast majority of Canadians still don’t regularly use the nets, and so government has to remain in the stone age.
It’s still silly that they took your info and credit card number and couldn’t charge you the correct amount, though…
@Nikita Not to mention the one month wait time for the consulate appointment and the three month wait for the passport to be renewed. They actually fly some documents (e.g. old passport) over to Moscow. Not to mention the the mail envelop and postage you must provide them so that they can inform you in writing when your passport is ready.
So, I guess Russian Consulate is Web Beta by comparison.