Digitising the emergency travel documents application process

One of the biggest and most important transactions which the FCO runs is emergency travel documents.

An emergency travel document can help you get back home if you don’t have your passport for one reason or another. It has all sorts of users including:

• People who have lost their passport when travelling
• Expatriates who have to return home urgently and find their passport has expired
• Children of expatriates who have never had a British passport but need to travel urgently to the UK
• People caught up in a sudden crisis such as an earthquake

However – there are some less serious cases where we issue an emergency travel document, and to help explain the transaction and our plans to transform it into a largely digital transaction, I’d like to go through a case which I saw in my early months at the FCO.

In a series of short ‘photo casebooks’ I’ll go through a very-slightly-fictionalised version of what actually happened to one customer. ‘Tom’ is played by the Digital Transformation Unit’s Mark Barlow; I play consular officer Arnold. Click on the images for a larger version.

When do you need an Emergency travel document? Phil’s photo casebook day 1

Tom runs back to the sports  bar but the passport has gone. How will he get home without it? Find out what happens now when you need an emergency travel document in day two of Phil’s Photo Casebook.

Follow Phil on Twitter @philbuckley5