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When you travel abroad, very often certain crisis arises that you cannot control. When you are in other country, there is limited facilities to your aid, and very often in such situations, you find yourself in a becoming helpless. This is when the consular services come to your aid. Consular services, as part of the embassy services, offer help and advice in the form of diplomatic agents of the country of origin to the citizens. As consular services are officially situated all over the world, in an event of an emergency, you can always contact them for help.

The following are the advantages of the consular services:

• In the case of emergencies, the consular would provide humanitarian assistance, to the distressed citizen when requested. This may include providing support services or assistance in situations like destitution, hostage cases, political turmoil or natural disasters.

• In the event of the emergency, the consular service will contact and inform the next of kin and communicate till the situation is cleared. In the event of reported death or life threatening illness or injury, the embassy services will provide the necessary logistical assistance, for example, import permit application for the importation of mortal remains

• In the case of medical crises, logistical and non-finance support will be provided to the citizen if there is a need for repatriation or professional attention

• In the case of missing persons or determination of whereabouts of a citizen, the consular will provide guidance the next of kin and contact relevant members for search assistance.

• If the citizen is in need of financial aid, where commercial means are limited, the embassy services will assist in facilitating the transfer of funds. However, the family members must deposit the funds at the regional office of the department of home affairs.

• In the case of abduction or forcible restriction, be it child or adult, the consular service will provide guidance and support to the next of kin, or the parents of the child. Where there is evidence that the health and safety is compromised, the matter is treated as an emergency and the consulate treats it accordingly.

Most of these consular services are provided by the official embassies of each country as a branch of their embassy services. However, certain national embassies also provide outsourcing of consular services to third party visa and passport services. VFS and Cox and Kings Global Services, are two such institutes that provide this service. Outsourcing of Consular Services from these institutes functions as well as the official national consular services, and are equally beneficial to any distressed citizen. Always check if the national embassies do provide an outsourced consular services before you plan your trip.

In the application for visa or a passport there is always a documentation process. Traditionally, one had to submit physical documents of identity proof like address proof, photographs, attested copies and letters. With today’s world and technology, this burden of this process has greatly reduced. The electronic document management process uses a digital format to process and document all the data from the individual’s documents. In this article, we mention the difference between the physical documentation services and the electronic document management services.

• No limitations to access

With the electronic document management services, your document’s data is stored on a database that can be accessed via a connected network. With the right level of authorization, any individual can bring up certain documents with just a click of a button. Easy access ensures faster sharing and retrieval from a paperless database. However, with the physical documentation, there is a need for the paper documents to passed or couriered from one place to another. This process can take anywhere between days to weeks and is also restricted by the geographical limitations.

• Easy searching and categorizing

With the Electronic Document Management Process you can store all the data in any series, be it alphabetical, serial number or any other type of preference. You can easily access any information just by typing a single word or a single name. The options here are numerous. You can also search for specific documents with multiple choices like age, gender, nationality etc. with the physical documentation process; you will be forced to go through the whole documents just to search for the one you want. The means to categorize this data is not only limiting, but also takes up a lot of time and space. The more data you have to document, the more tedious the job becomes.

• Better security

Recorded data can be misused or used for wrong purposed. With the electronic data management process, this data can be secured easily either with a pin code or password that can be accessed by certain individuals or a high level of authorization. This data also can be encrypted by certain methods and can be decrypted by a different process or a code, thus securing the data thoroughly. With the physical documentation process, it is either kept in large rooms, or filing cabinets that can be easily accessed by anybody, and can easily be damaged too.

This documentation process is an important part of the visa and passport application and approval. Many a times, these documents need to be used repeatedly for any new application. Thus in order to save time and resources, the electronic documents management services prove to be very beneficial.