21 September 2021
45 Pipitea Street, Wel ington 6011
Phone +64 4 495 7200
dia.govt.nz
Nick Sampson
fyi-request-16223-
[email address]
Dear Nick
Official Information Act 1982 request 2122-0173 – Citizenship processing timeframes
Thank you for your Official Information Act (Act) request received by the Department of Internal
Affairs (Department) on 24 August 2021.
You requested –
Your processing time calculation is deceptive. It does not include the crucial wait time of
the application. From the perspective of the applicant including the wait time is
important and in general, should be always included in the processing time. This is the
reason why the average values for online and paper applications are similar. You have
not disclosed when the applications mentioned in the table were allocated to LISO.
For transparency and accountability purposes, please revise the table and show the
processing times based on when the applicant made payment for the application and
when a decision was made for that applicant.
In response to your request, please see attached for Appendix A. Appendix A provides you with
the fol owing information for citizenship by grant applications received:
•
Table one – Breakdown of processing times for total number of paper applications (date
created to decision date) received in the month October 2020
•
Table two – Breakdown of processing times for paper applications (date created to
decision date) received in the month October 2020, by office location
•
Table three – Breakdown of processing times for total number of online applications
(date created to decision date) received in the month October 2020
•
Table four – Breakdown of processing times for online applications (date created to
decision date) received in the month October 2020, by office location.
This information has been updated since your last request, to measure the processing time from
the date an application is submitted and/or created in the system, to the decision date.
However, it is important for me to explain that the Department measures the citizenship
processing timeframe as the time from when an application is allocated to a citizenship trained
Life and Identity Services Officer (LISO), to when a decision is made. Because of this, the
previous dataset provided to you did not include the time where an application is ‘waiting to be
allocated’.
You will also note that there are variances in the average processing times based on office
location. There are several factors that have contributed to this, including staff availability, the
introduction of a new processing system and COVID-19 restrictions.
The Department currently has initiatives underway to reduce the citizenship application
backlog, speed up processing, and improve general customer experience. In the immediate term
this includes hiring additional temporary staff who wil focus on reducing the backlog of paper
applications, freeing up most existing staff to work exclusively on online applications.
We expect that the time taken for staff to process in the new online system should reduce as
they become more familiar with our new system. We are also continuing to develop this new
system and train more existing staff to process citizenship applications. Taken together the
range of initiatives should see a decrease in the backlog in coming months.
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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