I had to get one of these recently. (And thankfully, I am done with the government for a while.) If you want a process that will make you believe "wow, we have too much bureaucracy in this country", then get a PIV card. By the end, I thought I was definitely just being strung along in some sort of eternal joke, and had started joking that the reward for completing forms was more forms.

So many forms. Randomly imposed, arbitrary deadlines that were utterly impossible. (And … not really deadlines, since you can just email and say a polite "how about no" & magic extensions happen.) Forms that were submitted by encrypting them into a zip, and then sending zip+password in an email…?

The person who fingerprinted me was royally annoyed at me for showing up with all the materials their office had told me to show up with, but not having the materials that I wasn't told to show up with. (And that I wasn't "in the system" — okay. I'm new! I don't know why that is, nor who to ask, nor what 98% of the acronyms mean.)

You want to stop being a contractor, and give the PIV card back? More forms.

I started jokingly wondering when signatures in blood happen.

Definitely wasn't worth it, in my case.