Media Update, page-1553

Part of my job (for the past 20y) is facilitating regulatory approvals albeit in another industry.

A common tatic we see from the officers assessing applications is that when they cannot keep up with their workload OR when things are not clear cut, is they send an request for more information (RFI). Some of these requests are beyond frivolous asking for irrelevant information or information they know you cannot obtain in a timely manner. The main reason they do this is that like many places of employment, their personal performance is assessed on KPIs, one of which is how long it takes them to assess applications. By sending an RFI, they stop the clock so to speak on their own performance and buy themselves time. There is also a culture of wanting to be perceieved that they have been thorough and crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's

Take from this what you will but as I said before, there is no way based on my experience that a government department is assessing complex applications in 3-5 days. They can't even organise for your PCR to be tested in that time, LOL!