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The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) is a government entity tasked with managing migration in Nigeria. One of it's key responsibilities is processing passports and travel certificates. However, recent years have seen significant delays in document processing, with average waiting times increasing from 3 weeks to 12-18 weeks for renewals and from 6 weeks to 9 months for first-time applicants. These delays are primarily due to a labor-intensive, manual document review process, where NIS staff must manually assess the authenticity, completeness, consistency, and correctness of thousands of submitted documents.
Renewals
First-time Issue
Standard Timeline
3 weeks
6 weeks
Recent Timelines
12 - 18 weeks
9 months
Problem IDENTIFICATION
NIS staff manually reviewed thousands of documents monthly, with each document taking an average of 15-20 minutes to verify.
This manual process involved assessing completeness, consistency, and correctness across multiple types of documents, many of which lacked standardized formats.
This bottleneck was the primary cause of the significant delays in passport renewals and first-time applications. The challenge was clear: reducing document verification times while maintaining accuracy and reliability.
KEY CHALLENGES
1. Manual, Time-Consuming Process: Manual document verification meant processing only 24-32 documents daily, leading to backlogs.
2. Lack of Standardization: The documents submitted by applicants came in various formats, making it difficult to create a consistent verification process.
3. Human Error: Manual checks were prone to errors, contributing to delays in passport issuance.
Problem - in the news
CURRENT Use case description
1. NIS has staff who need to manually check submitted documents before a passport can be re-issued or produced for first-time applicants.
2. They receive a maximum of 20 types ofdocuments for each application.
3. In total, they receive thousands of documents per month.
4. All documents come in physical form.
5. They check them to assess: Completeness, consistency, and correctness. If so, the documents are accepted and the applicant’s biometrics is captured, otherwise, they reject them and ask for a resubmission.
6. They want to streamline this process, by having a system that recommends a justified acceptance or rejection.
Use case problem
1. There are a maximum of 27 different types of documents, submitted per applicant for review, verification, and approval.
2. Documents don’t follow any standard template or format, even those belonging to the same type/category (just like the CVs can have many design templates).
3. The review, verification, and approvalprocess is manual, which is labour intensive.
4. For each document, the staff (reviewer)has to manually:
#a - Check whether the document is what it says it is
#b - Check whether all the required sections are there (Completeness)
#c - Check that the minimum required information is there (Completeness)
#d - Check that the information is consistent across the document (Consistency)
#e - Check that the information complies to the requirements (Correctness)
5. The review, verification and approval process for each takes an average of 15 - 20 minutes
With an average review time of 15 -20 minutes, a NIS staff can only process between 24 - 32 documents daily. This grossly limits the number of passport applications that can be performed by the NIS
solution concept
1. Our proposed solution involves creating a user-friendly interface for applicants to upload documents.
2. These documents will be processed by an AI model that will classify document types and verify correctness and completeness in few seconds.
3. The AI model approves valid and complying documents and allows the user schedule biometric capturing date or rejects the specific wrong document and asks user to reupload the specific document.
This solution concept saves time and will help the NIS process more documents easier and faster. Thereby, helping cut down delay or waiting times on passport processing significantly.
Current process vs AI solution
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SUMMARY OF GAINS
1. Increased Speed: AI reduces processing time from 15-20 minutes per document to seconds.
2. Higher Throughput: AI can handle more documents per day, allowing NIS to process a significantly higher volume.
3. Error Reduction: Automating document checks reduces human errors, leading to more accurate processing.
4. Improved Customer Experience: Instant feedback on rejected documents and faster biometric scheduling lead to a more efficient and user-friendly process.
KEY LEARNINGS AND IMPACT
This project underscored the value of leveraging AI to tackle inefficiencies in government processes. By focusing on both user experience and technical feasibility, I was able to deliver a solution that not only met the immediate needs of the NIS but also laid the groundwork for future improvements in public sector services.
