What We’ve Learned About Online Status Card Applications

We launched online Status Card Applications in July 2021. Since then, we’ve been able to help with over 14,000 applications. Although the numbers have been on the up, we’ve recognized the challenges that our community has given us candid feedback on.

If you've been one of the folks who we've helped get a status card, thank you so much! Your feedback has helped us improve a whole lot of pain points over the past year. So using the opportunity to improve our service, we delve into the changes we’ve made over the past year based on those learnings!

Faster, Electronic Submission to Indigenous Services Canada

We’ve been working with Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) since our launch and are now able to send Status Card Applications to them digitally within 24 hours of completion. This change allows ISC to input and review the applications 90% faster than the paper process and allows you to get your Status Cards more quickly as a result! Boom!

Better Tools for Taking Your Portrait Photo

Taking a passport-style photo on your phone, computer or iPad is no mean feat. The struggle is real! ISC's requirements for the passport style photo they put onto your card are very specific. So how do we help you take a photo that meets these requirements?

So we added a photo cropper into the flow to take some of that work out for you! Our tool provides an outline “squiggle” of where the head and shoulders should go, so that you can pop your lovely face and shoulders in frame without getting a headache from the mere concentration of using width x inch guidelines. Whoo!

Status Card Fulfilment Time Tracking

One of the main questions that people ask us is, "How long will it take to get my card?" Until now, there's been no way to answer this other than calling ISC directly.

We send a lot of applications to ISC and ask that you tell us when you get your card. Based on this data we're able to tell you about how long it'll take for you to get your card based on how long it's taken folks to get theirs over the past 12 weeks.

You can check this out by signing into OneFeather and looking for the Current Processing Time section of the Status Card Application page. There’s nothing better than seeing the journey from start to finish, eh?

Automatic Address Search

Filling out your address is a tedious task and you can accidently make typos when you're doing it. It’s even more difficult when using your phone!

So, no more! As you start inserting your address, you’ll notice that it starts to populate automatically. Find your address, and voila! No more typos! Giving ease to the fingers and sliding through the application that bit faster. We aim to please!

Applications for Dependents

Another question that we received often was "Can I apply for my kids?"

We added Status Card for Dependents back in June, and have been working to allow applications for your kids or adult dependents, no matter what the circumstances may be. Taking away any obstacles is our mission!

Improvement to Customer Experience

We try to stay focused on creating tools that help you folks out first and foremost, and we're constantly checking to see if the work we're doing is helping folks out. One of the most telling things is the requests that come through to our Customer Experience team.

Delaney Barlow, OneFeather’s Customer Experience Lead shares:

The photo cropper has allowed the client to confidently submit their portrait photo without having to worry if the dimensions are correct, which has decreased the amount of support tickets. It’s also easy to forget building/unit numbers when entering an address, so the auto-address feature removes this frustration, and the live-tracker helps reassure folks that their card is being processed!

Overall, the turnover time for submitting applications to ISC has increased because of the changes to improving the customer experience.

To get started with our speedier status card service, you can apply for Status Card Renewal/ Replacement here.