21 June 2021
45 Pipitea Street, Wellington 6011
Phone +64 4 495 7200
dia.govt.nz
Daniel
fyi-request-15426-
[email address]
Dear Daniel
OIA request 20/21 0563 Request for citizenship information
Thank you for your Official Information Act (Act) request received by the Department of Internal
Affairs (Department) on 11 May 2021.
You requested –
1. Underneath check processes are from Citizenship Guide November 2020. Can you please tell
how many hours efforts(department wise) it takes for a case officer to collect information from
these department ? Please add in reply if there is any extra department to collect information by
Citizenship case officer.
• New Zealand Police (some convictions are assessed under section 9A of the Citizenship Act)
• New Zealand Security Intelligence Service
• Ministry of Social Development
• Ministry of Justice
• Inland Revenue Department
• Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
2.Time taken by a citizenship case officer to approve citizenship (till approved citizenship) for a
normal person with no bad credit, no traffic offense, no tax due, etc? Please add in reply if there
are more checks? Please provide data from Jan 2021 to June 2021.
3. Number of Citizenship files processed per day by a Citizenship case officer (till approved
Citizenship), Please provide data from Jan 2020 to June 2021?
4. How many Citizenship case officers are there in DIA by City wise to process the citizenship
files? How many in Auckland, Wellington etc?
5.Number for citizenship files allocated to per case officer?
6.Time taken by a case officer to process the file? (till approved citizenship) Please provide data
from Jan 2020 to June 2021.
7. How frequently the citizenship ceremonies are happening? Just asking months and frequency
in a month? Please provide data from Jan 2021 to June 2021
8. Number for citizenship files applied in Auckland? How many online and paper based? Please
provide data from Jan 2020 to June 2021.
9. Citizenship applications Approved by month (Jan 2021- June 2021)?
10. Currently which months citizenship files are in processing or allocated to citizenship cases
officers for Auckland?
I note that in our previous letter to you of 9 June 2021, all information requested was provided
with the exception of the data requested in questions two and six.
In response to question two, I can confirm between 1 January 2021 and 31 May 2021 it has
taken an average of 42 business days for applications to be approved after having been
allocated to a case officer.
As noted in our previous letter, when we refer to an application being approved, this is when
the Minister or delegated official has approved for citizenship to be granted to an applicant, in
most cases, pending their attendance of a citizenship ceremony.
Please refer to the table below for a monthly breakdown of the average number of business
days taken for an application to be approved after having been allocated to a case officer,
requested in question six.
Month
Average processing time
January 2020
33
February 2020
33
March 2020
28
April 2020
56
May 2020
55
June 2020
56
July 2020
46
August 2020
50
September 2020
46
October 2020
41
November 2020
35
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December 2020
45
January 2021
47
February 2021
41
March 2021
41
April 2021
49
May 2021
38
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision.
Information about how to make a complaint is available at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
freephone 0800 802 602.
Yours sincerely
Julia Taylor
Manager Operational Policy and Official Correspondence
Service Delivery and Operations
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