It is a process drawing from multiple humans; fingerprint box checker human, background checker human, answering calls before the caller is on hold for the second hour human, etc. Apparently each human has their own work load and their own 'throughput', and we are at the mercy of each and every string in the web, and to it's recalcitrance to being drawn back into our 'file', and for the final human to acknowledge the other humans' work, and to send the process to the 'printing press'; likely involving more humans. Then there is the USPS, and I will leave their deserved remarks to your imagination. God bless run-on sentences!
My guess is that there are too many humans involved, but I may be jaded since I submitted my requirements before you did and I am still waiting as well.
Some of us get fewer humans involved, and we get assigned to differing levels of competence and speed.
Teamwork - collectively dragging down productivity for centuries!
Long live the robots!