ID hell

I spent today doing a mundane but necessary task that many of us do without much thought, but about which we realise the significance of devoting a few hours here and there to do.

Maintaining my filing.

I put away all my FY11-12 documents and papers that had been piling up on the blue chair (well, it worked as a system for a while...). I then re-organised all the papers I'd been pulling out of different odd locations in my cleaning blitz of December, and packed away all my social work books and assignments into their preordained corner. I was mildly interested to flick through a few assignments that I've kept from my uni days in the early 90s, and made the unexciting decision to keep on holding onto them for... god knows what. Posterity.

All in all, my documents take up 5 drawers in a filing cabinet. I'm 38, so that's nearly 8 years to fill one drawer. Not bad.

Of course, keeping old assignments is hardly important. I do know that just one folder holds the truly important documents. The folder I'd grab in an emergency, if I had time. The one with my birth certificate, Eleanor's birth certificate, our passports, and various other bits and pieces that prove I am who I say I am.

The reason this rather mundane event of today is worthy of this post is this: I have spent approximately 35 hours of my work time in the past two weeks helping six community members apply to be foster carers and to get a Working with Children Check.

While I can see that some genuine effort has been made by the designers of the various forms to reduce the overall imperviousness of government identity verification systems (for example, by allowing certain people to make a declaration that someone is who they say they are), overall the process is extraordinarily complicated.

Why?

1) Most people don't have birth certificates. To apply for one is a process in itself. To do this in the context of their birth, that of their parents and grandparents and so on never having been registered becomes almost impossible. And certainly a lengthy process.

2) Most people do not have photo ID, such as a driver's licence. After all, scrambling the birth certificate hurdle to get a driver's licence is hard enough.

3) Most people don't hold any cards, apart from a keycard (and sometimes not even that! demonstrating beautifully how the world turns on a different axis where money is concerned out here)

4) No one receives 'utilities bills' in community housing (electricity is supplied through pre-purchased cards, water runs free), often do not have a home phone, and if they do receive official correspondence do not see a strong reason why this needs to be kept and stored 

4) Don't even mention passports to me, okay!!

By contrast, my wallet is literally bulging with all forms of ID, including photo ID. Student cards, Medicare card, health insurance, driver's license, WWCC, credit cards, key cards, library cards. The list goes on. I am IDed to my eyeballs. I know where my birth certificate is. In fact, I've carried it around with me in that all important folder every since my  mother gave it to me back in 1990 and I've faithfully held onto it for 22 years since. And, not at all oddly, my father went down and registered my birth within a few days of it happening.... Facilitating the whole beautiful process of identification in a smooth transition from there on in.

None of which applies out here. Which means I spent time searching for any bits of paper with someone's address, asking (and re-checking) if the applicants happen to have just one card (any card.... try me), ringing around various places that might be a source of ID, helping ring the bank and negotiating the trials of telephone banking to get a statement faxed, finding authorised referees, taking photos that meet the regulations, certifying at least 80 different forms of identification that were scraped together, completing the requests for alternate lodgment because there is no handy post office nearby, and then carefully working out that each individual has satisfied the requirements.

And now to working out who will pay the costs for the ID, and how it will be paid.  That's a whole 'nother trial...