Inter-Agency Process

Review Process
State and Commerce Departments

  The State Department has issued several internal requirements about how long an application should take during processing. Their goal is less than two weeks; however, each of the reviewing desks can "stop the clock" and has 30 days to complete a full review. It is easy to understand that some applications may take months when staffed out to multiple desks. This basically means, each desk an application stops at has 30 days to complete their review. The State Department frequently posts metrics on their performance on their website, so an organization can generalize how much time the average license application is going to take. However keep in mind the clock "stopping" part when figuring out the timeframe.

The Commerce Department has a similar process and a similar electronic application system called SNAP-R. The big difference is that the Commerce Department is likely to send your application over to the State Department for review prior to releasing it to the applicant. This guarantees that a Commerce Department license will take longer than the average Department of State application.