19 January 2023
45 Pipitea Street, Wel ington 6011
Phone +64 4 495 7200
dia.govt.nz
Ed Hirsche
fyi-request-21330-
[email address]
Tēnā koe Ed
OIA request 22/23 0442 Request for unal ocated citizenship application data
Thank you for your Official Information Act (Act) request received by the Department of Internal
Affairs (Department) on 4 December 2022.
You requested –
•
I have been watching the data on your website about the unallocated backlog of
citizenship applications by month. I note that the rate of change has substantially
decreased in the last few months with many fewer unallocated applications being
processed.
•
Please provide any information you have to explain that. Was it due to rising numbers of
applications? Decreasing staff capacity? Other reasons?
In response to your request I can provide you with the fol owing information.
The number of unal ocated applications represents the number of applications we have not
been able to allocate yet. The number reducing month on month shows we are processing more
applications than we receive. For example, if the unallocated number is zero, it would mean we
are able to allocate applications to be processed as soon as we receive them.
You have asked for information about the variation in the rate in which the backlog of
citizenship applications have been reduced each month.
Please see Appendix A, Table One – Number of total Applications received, the number of total
applications processed from January – December 2022 as of 12 January 2023 attached alongside
this letter. I have included this table which provides additional information from the website
that you viewed, showing the number of applications received (which does vary across the year)
and the number of applications completed in a given month.
Since March 2022, the backlog has reduced month on month (by varying amounts).
The principal reason for the variation each month is due to the mix of applications completed in
a given month, including how many have been completed via an expedited process, how many
were simpler applications allocated to newly trained staff members, and how many required full
manual assessment.
The proportion varies: in April and May we had a large number of applications which could
fol ow an expedited pathway based on the results of automated checks. The backlog of this type
of application has largely been eliminated, and these are now generally processed in under a
month by a small number of staff.
Newly trained staff initially worked on simpler applications. Later in 2022 they received
additional training and are now focussing on the oldest applications which require more checks
and can take longer to process.
There is continued review of operational processes and practices in light of the capabilities of
our new online system, and refining process based on data and analysis. Each time this is done
a number of applications from the general queue can be filtered out and processed via the
expedited process, which leads to a temporary bump in numbers while the applications are
worked through.
While the mix of applications is the primary reason for the fluctuation, the number of
applications in a given month also depends on the availability of staff (impacted too by COVID
illness) and the proportion of staff in training. Mid-year citizenship throughput was also
impacted by the extraordinary demand for passports when borders reopened, leading to an
influx of applications and calls, which temporarily diverted some citizenship resource.
The Department expect to continue to reduce the backlog significantly each month and have
recently employed additional staff, while continuing to use data to identify refinements to the
online system. It is also working to provide updated information on the Citizenship Timeframes
page to respond to most common queries, and wil be publishing datasets on data.govt.nz.
Please also see the lin
k https://catalogue.data.govt.nz/dataset/status-of-citizenship-by-grant-
applications-by-date-received-at-dia/resource/712409ae-d154-4ac9-a511-75627d4a9eb0 which
gives you information on the Status of Citizenship by Grant applications by date received.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, the Department has
decided to proactively release a copy of this response on the DIA website. Al requestor data,
including your name and contact details, will be removed prior to release. The released
response will be made available here
: https://www.dia.govt.nz/Official-Information-Act-
Requests-2.
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.
Ngā mihi
Julia Taylor
Manager Operational Policy and Official Correspondence
Service Delivery and Operations
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