Systems Consultants (SC) (aka: Utah Administrative Wildlife Services) is on contract with the DWR for, among other things, providing and manning seven phone lines and 1 fax line 24/7 from January 31 to December 31 of every year, so they don't have as many personnel on board, and they don't work at night during that one-month gap, which is where we are now. Yet, they managed to catch the errors and correct them quickly. I'd say they were "pretty good".
Edited: And as for them wasting your tag and application fees, NONE of your tag money goes to that and only $3.01 of the application fees goes to Systems Consultants who:
1- Keeps track (name, address, phone, email address, DOB, gender, weight, hair color, eye color, social security number, drivers license, tags, points, waiting periods, hunter education, Lifetime license, Dedicated Hunter, residency, child support payments, felonies, and citizenship of ALL hunters who have a DWR ID number.
2- Sends postcards/emails to all of the above reminding them of hunts and upcoming hunts.
4- Provides and staffs the 7 phone lines and 1 fax line.
5- Verify and collect all application fees.
6- Conduct the draws using all eligible applicants' numbers. (Remember, there's more than one draw!)
7- Keeps track of every successful winner. Sends out the notifications of Successful AND Unsuccessful (Also keep an alternate list of applicants.)
8- Verify and collect all permit fees.
9- Attempt 5 times to collect declined credit card fees from credit card company. Attempt to contact applicant 4 times to collect permit fee. Assign any tags with uncollected fees to alternate applicants.
(The task list on the contract is too long to list on this post but be aware that nearly all of the things you think DWR is doing, is being done by SC.) $3.01 per applicant sounds like a bargain to me!