Tçnâ koe John

Thank you for your email of 11 October 2022.

This email is to confirm receipt, and that we’ve passed your email on to the person best placed to consider it.

We try to respond to all correspondence within 15 working days. If we can’t give you a response to the matters you’ve raised in those 15 working days, we will get in touch to let you know when you can expect a response.

Ngâ mihi nui
Mike

show quoted sections

Kia ora John,

 

Thank you for your email.

 

The Auditor-General is not subject to the Official Information Act 1981.

 

All auditors are obliged to keep the information they gather confidential.
This is an important and long-established way of encouraging entities to
give their auditors open access to internal and sensitive information.
This means we won't usually disclose information from our statutory
functions, such as information from individual audit files.

 

The Public Audit Act 2001 balances that confidentiality with an
overarching power for the Auditor-General to decide when and how to
disclose information arising from our work. This power lets us disclose
information when we consider that to be necessary for effective public
accountability. We think carefully about what information to include in
the reports that we release as we prepare them. 

 

In response to your questions, we cannot disclose details from
conversations our staff have in confidence with public organisations. We
encourage you to raise your concerns about the Citizenship by Grant
applications directly with the Department of Internal Affairs'
[1]Citizenship Office.

 

We do not have any plans to look at the citizenship by grant process in
our current work programme. However, we plan on looking into the
effectiveness of immigration processes for skilled migrant visas. This
includes looking at how well Immigration New Zealand is managing visa
processing for skilled migrants and the ease of engagement, communication,
and feedback to applicants. We are also interested in the timeliness of
processes for applicants and how Immigration New Zealand deals with
complaints. You can read more about this work in [2]part 3 of our Annual
plan 2022/23.

 

Thank you again for writing to us.

 

Ngā mihi

Mike

 

[3][email address]
Office of the Auditor-General Te Mana Arotake
Improving trust, promoting value
Level 2, 100 Molesworth Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011 | PO Box 3928
Wellington 6140
[4]oag.parliament.nz | Follow us on [5]Twitter, [6]Facebook, [7]Linkedin,
and [8]Instagram

 

 

 

 

show quoted sections

Tçnâ koe John

 

Thank you for your email of 17 October 2022.

 

We’ve passed your email on to the person best placed to consider it. We
try to respond to all correspondence within 15 working days. If we can’t
give you a response to the matters you’ve raised in those 15 working days,
we will get in touch to let you know when you can expect a response.

 

Ngâ mihi nui

 

Shauna Lough (she / her)
Advisor, Correspondence and Events – Strategy and Communications
04 917 1500| [1][email address]
Office of the Auditor-General Te Mana Arotake
Improving trust, promoting value
Level 2, 100 Molesworth Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011 | PO Box 3928
Wellington 6140
[2]oag.parliament.nz | Follow us on [3]Twitter, [4]Facebook, [5]Linkedin,
and [6]Instagram

 

 

show quoted sections

Tçnâ koe John

 

Thank you for your email of 17 October 2022.

 

We note your comments about our intention to look into the effectiveness
of immigration processes for skilled migrant visas, as part of one of our
focus areas in our discretionary work programme for 2022/23.

 

We draw on a range of information to help determine what to include in our
work programme, including feedback from Parliament and information from
the public and organisations with an interest in the public sector. While
our Annual Plan 2022/23 has already been published, we encourage you to
keep an eye out for this process next year so you can give feedback on our
proposed work programme and its focus areas. If you’re interested, you can
[1]sign up to receive our email notifications as soon as we publish our
work.

 

As we’ve previously mentioned, we do not resolve individual complaints or
concerns and can't intervene in decisions that public organisations are
making. We are not a complaints agency, and you can read more about the
limits to our role [2]here. As such, although we cannot do any specific
work at this point about the issue you have raised, we appreciate you
writing to us about your concerns. We use information from the public to
support our audit work and our monitoring of the public sector. It
provides useful context for our work and can alert our auditors to areas
of concern.

 

As part as our audit role, we audit annually the Ministry of Business,
Innovation and Employment, which oversees Immigration New Zealand. We
audit the financial statements for the year and information about their
performance.

 

We’re pleased you have already raised your concerns directly with
Immigration New Zealand. Another option may be to write directly to the
Minister of Immigration, Hon Michael Wood, who can be contacted [3]here.

 

We trust this clarifies our role and wish you all the best.  

 

Ngâ mihi nui

 

Shauna Lough (she / her)
Advisor, Correspondence and Events – Strategy and Communications
04 917 1500| [4][email address]
Office of the Auditor-General Te Mana Arotake
Improving trust, promoting value
Level 2, 100 Molesworth Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011 | PO Box 3928
Wellington 6140
[5]oag.parliament.nz | Follow us on [6]Twitter, [7]Facebook, [8]Linkedin,
and [9]Instagram

 

 

show quoted sections

Tēnā koe John

Thank you for your email of 21 October 2022 and request for clarification.

We can confirm the Department of Internal Affairs is the correct agency as they manage the citizenship office and enquiries - apologies for the confusion.

Ngā mihi nui

Shauna Lough (she / her)
Advisor, Correspondence and Events – Strategy and Communications
04 917 1500| [email address]
Office of the Auditor-General Te Mana Arotake
Improving trust, promoting value
Level 2, 100 Molesworth Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011 | PO Box 3928 Wellington 6140
oag.parliament.nz | Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram

show quoted sections