Customer Story: Pakistan Embassy and Consular Services, Dublin, Ireland 

Shahzad Nousherwani, former Deputy Head of Mission Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Pakistan, Dublin (August 2018 to February 2022) oversaw the design and implementation of their Diaspora Management System in his Embassy to transform their Consular Services efficiencies

BACKGROUND

“There was a lack of uniformity in Consular processes at our Dublin Mission for documenting customer data, generating receipts and issuing monthly financial statements for Consular services. We often resorted to printing generic receipts, filling them in manually and tabulating them sequentially for monthly financial statements. The procedures adopted were paper-heavy, reliant on manual processes prone to amending, and unsuited to the growing demands of our times.

In view of this, we worked with Zaitech Logixs Limited, a trustworthy team of Pakistani-Irish developers for a tailor-made solution call the ‘Consular Payment Management System – Beta version’ (CPMS). This is now known as DMS (Diaspora Management System). The system was tested and tweaked to our Mission’s requirements over many months and has been successfully deployed since September 2021.

CUSTOMER FRIENDLY SOLUTION

DMS allows our customers to book their appointments, and pay, for Consular services including Passport types, Birth Registrations and Attestation Documents (we can add more services if needed). They can track the service processing and be notified when ready for collection or forwarding. Our customers know exactly what documents to bring to the Embassy and when, so there is no queuing issues anymore – a great saving of time and money.

MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

From our perspective, we now have greater control over our workload and process management. We log in via Cloud, where Users have various degrees of Privileges generated by management. We can see transactions of all services to date and create new transactions immediately for new or existing customers, so we have their details for any subsequent services over time. Whichever service a customer is availing of, they can be selected and added to the transaction (prices are pre-loaded but can be changed from the Admin account, as and when necessary).

Multiple Services for the same customer can be added on the same receipt – the system automatically tabulates the total cost to the customer while also logging in the given token/diary number of each passport/document- which is extremely important for us for accuracy, traceability and legacy. The summary of the transaction is shown and payment type is specified. This is the point when the customer is asked to pay said fee via Debit/Credit Card at our Mission and the transaction is completed – each transaction is given a unique Transaction Number and a Receipt is generated at this point along with the Appointment date and time they have chosen. The user can view the receipt that has been generated which can be printed/posted or emailed to them immediately.

A report for any time period or service type can be generated instantly at the end of the month or at any time of request, giving us accurate and live information of the type and nature of Consular services that are being availed of at the Mission.

THE BENEFITS OF US ADOPTING Zaitech’s DMS INCLUDE

• Generating live information of the type and nature of Consular services available at the Mission. For example, we saw a substantial increase in Passport applications in October compared to September (which we reckon is because Irish Immigration Offices reopened in October 2021, post-Covid lockdown) and were able to handle it efficiently. 
• A professional and standardized receipt can be printed or emailed to the customer. Since the receipt also includes the diary/token number of a document/passport, the customer shows the same at the time of collection and the staff can easily search for their document/passport accordingly. This also obviates the duplication of diary entries since a list of all transactions and their related diary/token numbers have already been logged in the process and a list can be generated instantly.

• Tabulation of every service type allows us to see which services are being demanded more and we can shift our human resources to cater to that particular service. This reduces overtime and demand for extra/new/part-time/unqualified staff. 
• A database of all customers is automatically developed at the back-end through repeated usage. Apart from the benefits of having the details of every individual coming to the Embassy, it also allows us to see the real-time distribution of our diaspora across Ireland and subsequent Consular visits to high-intensity locations can be planned on the basis of hard data.
• We are saving time and energy by automatically generating month-end financial reports for all Consular services. Moreover, Ministry also often asks for such data on, for example, a quarterly basis, and an accurate report for all services, or any particular service, can be generated instantaneously for any time period.
• The Admin account can add as many service types at any given price point for the Consular staff’s use (we currently have over 90 service-type/price points). If Ministry decrees that the price of a particular service has changed (such as revision in rates of specific passport categories), that can be done instantaneously at the back-end by the Admin account. Moreover, a few ‘wildcard’ options are added that allow staff to manually punch in a price for a service, such as Fee Adjustment in lieu of Online Passport Applications with accuracy and accountability.

• The service utilizes state-of-the-art security features; the Admin can reset passwords for any user at the back-end in case of misuse, privilege levels, and accessibility times. Logs of every user’s activity on the platform are automatically maintained. The data itself is hosted on 2 dedicated secure servers and cannot be compromised even if a particular user’s account is compromised- a vitally important feature.

Their use of Enterprise technology allows us to scale this platform up whichever way we want. For example, a feature can be easily added whereby as soon as the applicant’s passport or document is ready for collection, the staff can use the platform to send a generic SMS message or email to the customer informing them that their document/passport is ready for collection. This would also allow us to also track service delivery times. If there is more than One staff member at the Mission for Consular services, their logging times and transaction completion logs can easily show which staff members are working more efficiently than the others.

The System allows us to have real-time visibility of how much Consular traffic is being handled by which staff members, real-time visibility of our diaspora, real-time visibility of which services have a higher demand than others, and reallocation of human resources can be done accordingly, correct Consular data available every time there is an Official query, can send out pertinent information to our diaspora members, brings greater regulatory oversight/control for other wings working in the Mission related to Consular services, the performance of all staff members dealing with Consular issues can be evaluated based on hard-data rather than sentiments, brings much-needed uniformity in standards of Consular service management via the use of digital receipts and digital notifications for collection of documents. 

While such an exercise inadvertently required the answering of questions such as data privacy policy, data security, regulatory framework, training of staff members, and devising of SOPs, the eventual benefits of the final product bring a powerful tool to our disposal. We find that the only way for increasing demands of doing more with less can be tackled is through the adoption of technology that is tailor-made by those who are conversant with the dynamics of Consular services. Zaitech’s Diaspora Management System (DMS) is the first step in that direction.”