I would make a couple of points about that.
There are benchmarks set, believe it or not, and we mean that in a couple of ways. First of all, when people apply, they can actually see on the Internet how long it's likely to take their case to be processed. But there are also benchmarks that we try to meet internally, and we try to get two particular points, for instance, with the decision time. For instance, the IRB is a good example, where the chairman of the IRB sets goals for the amount of time that he wants it to take in a given year to make a decision on a case. So there are benchmarks and we measure ourselves, and others measure us, against them.
The second point I would make is that I've become quite a big fan of the people in the department. I know people are frustrated with how long it takes, but I really think that the people within the department are doing their level best to try to speed things along. There are a number of initiatives under way to try to make that happen. One of them is the global case management system, which is a much maligned system lately, but from what I can see, it is a good way to try to make things much more efficient than they are.
But in the end, I think when we talk about the backlog, for instance, it boils down to a couple of things. One of them is how we ensure that we don't process 250,000 to 260,000 people only to see 300,000 more apply and the backlog get longer, in which case I don't care how good your people are, you're going to have longer waiting times. So we have to figure out what we do about all these people applying. Do we have a different system where, when people apply, you say that we're going to find ways to restrict the number of people who apply in particular classes until such time as the backlog is done? There are other countries that handle it in different ways.
These are some of the issues I'm looking for some guidance on, and if we can get to the point where we decide how we want to handle that, then we can start to shorten the backlog and turn these cases around much more quickly.