9 June 2021
45 Pipitea Street, Wellington 6011
Phone +64 4 495 7200
dia.govt.nz
ED Hirsch
fyi-request-15427-
[email address]
Dear Mr Hirsch
Official Information Act 1982 request 2021-0654 – Citizenship processing timeframes
Thank you for your Official Information Act (Act) request received by the Department of Internal
Affairs (Department) on 11 May 2021.
You requested –
I write in partial follow-up to your response to OIA request 2021 0453 regarding
citizenship processing timelines that I have accessed via FYI.
In the appendix to your response to that request, you provide a graph of average days to
be assigned to a case officer. I note an extremely large jump from December (~80 days)
to February (~140 days). In your answer, you suggest that this was caused by COVID as
well as a new system installed in October 2019.
My goal is to understand as precisely as possible the causes for this increase. 'COVID' is a
very general explanation. Given that, I request (under the OIA act) any documents that
you have which set out the precise and specific causes of the increase.
Similarly, I would also like to understand what, if anything, is being done to redress it and
would request any documents that you have internally about plans to reduce the time
taken to assign cases to a case officer.
I use documents very broadly: email as well as written documentation should count.
In response to the first part of your request I can provide you with the following documentation
relating to the specific caused of the increase:
• Appendix A – Page 6, IA Status Report WE 12 May 2021
The IA Status Report is a weekly update from the Department to the Minister of Internal Affairs,
that details the progress being made on the priority projects in her portfolio.
Some information in this documentation is being withheld under the following provisions of the
Act:
•
9(2)(a) of the Act; the withholding of the information is necessary to protect the privacy
of natural persons.
Please note that any information that is deemed to be out of scope will also be withheld and
marked as such
.
While we have only identified the above document to be in scope of this part your request, I am
able to provide you with the following information that will help explain the reasons for the
increase in allocation time.
In your email you referred to the graph provided in response to OIA request 2021-0453, which
shows the ‘Average length of time for citizenship applications to be assigned by a case officer’.
This graph demonstrates a rise in the average number of days it took to assign citizenship
applications to case officers from December 2020. However, it is important to explain that the
horizontal line on the graph trending upwards over time reflects the accumulation of
applications that created the backlog, and subsequently picked up by case officers to process.
The average number of days taken to assign an application to a case officer is recorded at the
date an application is assigned. This means that unassigned applications are not counted in the
line in the graph.
The first reason for the increase in allocation time is that the Department accepts applications at
appointments. Prior to December, applications accepted at appointment were assigned to a
case officer who began processing the application immediately. The Department recognised
that this was prioritising applications received at appointments above those received by mail or
submitted online. Because of this, the Department changed its processes in December 2020.
While applications are still accepted at appointments, those applications are now put in the
same queue to be assigned as other paper applications. While these applications were small in
volume, they did impact the average working days from date submitted to date assigned to a
case officer.
The second reason is that in December 2020 the Department started pushing to clear the
backlog of applications and did so by ensuring that case officers were assigned the oldest file
waiting to be allocated.
The Department allocated several team members to work solely on these older citizenship
applications pending in the backlog. This push meant that more of the older applications were
assigned to team members working on citizenship by grant applications across those months.
The increase in allocation time from December 2020 depicted in the graph reflects when those
case officers began processing the older applications.
In response to the second part of your request for documents about plans to reduce the time
taken to assign applications to case officers, I can provide you with the following
documentation:
• Appendix B – Page 3, IA Status Report WE 17 March 2021
Some information in this documentation is being withheld under the following provisions of the
Act:
•
9(2)(a) of the Act; the withholding of the information is necessary to protect the privacy
of natural persons.
Page 3 of 3
It is also important to explain that reducing the processing time for applications is a key focus
area for the Department, which includes reducing the time taken to allocate applications to case
officers. We expect a combination of measures to achieve a reduction in the processing
timeframes in the coming months.
The Department has recently redeployed some passport processing staff and trained them in
citizenship processing tasks. A further 11 FTEs will be trained in citizenship processing in the
coming two months. This, along with progressive developments in the new online system will
hopefully see a positive impact in reducing citizenship processing timeframes.
I understood your request for all documents to include emails, however preliminary scoping
established that there were thousands of emails that referred to the citizenship backlog and
processing delays. This would require the Department to review all emails retrieved as a part of
this search to establish which of those would fall within scope.
Therefore, I must refuse this part of your request under section 18(f) of the Act; that the
information requested cannot be made available without substantial collation or research.
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
Page 3 of 3
