Hi Pine,
I think nobody wants to say that questions should take longer to get answered - we all would like your inquiries to be answered sooner rather than later. To accomplish this, the Committee has made changes in its workflow several times in the past year, to especially make user group applications less time consuming. Previously, decisions on User Groups had to be taken by a formal committee vote, after a period of consensus building. Recently this process has been delegated mostly to the liaisons, who have some liberty to decide on behalf of the Committee.
However, I also feel a need to mention that it is unreasonable to compare two such very different committees and expect similar response times because of it. While I am not familiar with how discussions in the IEG-committee go, I can say that the AffCom often has ''in camera'' discussions, which are not visible to the outside world. We're working hard to come to a good *Committee decision* rather than a simple up/down vote of individuals. We need to combine our experiences and skills rather than make a choice all for ourselves. Unfortunately we don't have frequent meetings, so these discussions mostly drag on via email - something to improve. Especially when a new type of application (or an application with a new component) comes in, that requires some discussion among the Committee members - this unfortunately takes time.
This combined with the fact that there is little staff support (something being worked on to improve as well) and that the number of members has been low for some time (selections currently ongoing), I can confidently say that the situation can be expected to improve over the coming months even further. Will that solve all problems, and get all response times as we would like to see them? Probably not. But improvement would already be a big win, I'd say.
A last, general word of advice: if you don't get a reply to your question a week after your email, feel free to poke again. Please do it genty, but feel free. No need to get agressive, angry or insulted because it takes long. It might well be that your liaison is busy at work, or even that it ended up in their spam filter. A friendly reminder goes a long way.
Best regards,
Lodewijk
(outgoing AffCom member, not speaking on behalf of anyone else)