Per article on TV, the State Dept Councilor services computer crashed worldwide .Has anyone applied for a passport renewal in last couple of days-how long did they indicate it would take to get renewed passport.

Lefty

Thanks for the heads-up. Lots of hits for a Google search: state department computer crash

Here's just one, from PCWorld

Mac

State Department computer crash slows visa, passport applications worldwide

Martyn Williams

@martyn_williams Jul 24, 2014 1:40 PMe-mailprint

The U.S. State Department’s main computer system for processing passport and visa applications crashed earlier this week leading to global delays for travel documents.

The problems first surfaced after “routine maintenance” on the consular database, said Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, during a televised briefing Thursday. Harf said the system has been brought back online, but it’s still not back to full capacity.

“We are working urgently to correct the problem and expect our system to be fully operational soon,” she said.

Because the problems occurred after maintenance work, Harf said the U.S. government doesn’t believe the problems are the result of any malicious action, although she acknowledged the department hasn’t identified the root cause of the problem.

“This is worldwide, it’s not specific to any particular country,” she said.

The State Department describes the consular database as “one of the largest Oracle-based data warehouses in the world.”

“As of December 2009, it contains over 100 million visa cases and 75 million photographs, utilizing billions of rows of data, and has a current growth rate of approximately 35,000 visa cases every day,” according to a document describing the database.

The database provides almost real-time access to all consular activity worldwide and related activity in the U.S.

“There is a backlog, we are working through it so we ask people to be patient,” Harf said.

Unlike some countries your US passport remains valid for travel until you pickup your new one, so do it early and before you run out if pages on the ones that have already been added.

Unlike some countries your US passport remains valid for travel until you pickup your new one, so do it early and before you run out if pages on the ones that have already been added.

However, make sure you have six months left on it before it expires, when applying for some visas...such as in Thailand and the Philippines.

Edited July 25, 201411 yr by slipperylobster