4 August 2023
45 Pipitea Street, Wellington 6011
Phone +64 4 495 7200
dia.govt.nz
Felix Lee
fyi-request-23412-
[email address]
Tēnā koe Felix
OIA request 23/24 0015 Request for Passport Timeframes
Thank you for your Official Information Act (Act) request received by the Department of Internal
Affairs (Department) on 6 July 2023.
You requested –
1. Please provide the average processing time for a standard passport, categorized by
month, spanning from July 2019 to the present date.
2. Please provide the average processing time for a standard passport, categorized by year,
spanning from the earliest date you have records for up to year 2023. If retrieving older
data proves to be overly cumbersome, please limit the statistics to the more readily
available information.
3. (a) Does DIA have any opinion as to is the current time is too long
(b) and if so what's the ideal timeframe to get a standard passport
4.
Please give me the document that covers the plans to improve passport processing times.
In response to your request, I can provide you with the following information.
Appendix A is attached alongside this letter. It shows the following tables of average working
times taken to process standard passports as at 18 July 2023:
• Table One: Average working days taken to process standard passports (monthly) from
July 2019 – July 2023
• Table Two: Average working days taken to process standard passports (yearly) from
2016 – 2022. This data has been provided yearly, from 2016. Anything earlier than this
year would take considerable effort to collate as no easily accessible working days of
data is available.
Both tables are in xlsx format as requested.
Caveats
• Data was collated on 18 July 2023
• Working days are Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays.
• Averages have been rounded to the nearest whole number.
• As the data is extracted from a dynamic system, there may be small variances when
compared with prior or future datasets.
Question One Response
Please refer to Table one in Appendix A.
Question Two Response
Please refer to Table two in Appendix A.
The Department regularly proactively releases Official Information Act responses including
those for passport processing. For additional contextual information about passport processing
during and post Covid-19 related border closures, you may wish to view the response found
here:
https://www.dia.govt.nz/Official-Information-Act-Requests-2 with the reference number
2223-0070.
Question Three (a) Response
The Official Information Act 1982 (Act) only provides access to official information that is held
by an agency or Minister. The Act does not require an agency or Minister to create new
information or form an opinion to answer a request. For these reasons I am refusing your
request for information for question 3(a). Further information can be found on page six of the
Ombudsman’s guide ‘The OIA for Agencies and Ministers’:
https://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/resources/oia-ministers-and-agencies-guide-
processing-official-information-requests
Question Three (b) Response
The Department is focused on managing our work in progress and strives towards passport
decision making within Government Service Standards of 10 working days.
Question Four Response
It may be helpful to explain that the Department continually looks for ways to improve the
processing times for our outstanding work in progress. We take actions daily to, for example,
review demand, allocate staff to tasks, enhance productivity, progress recruitment, or train
staff. Given this suite of interventions there is no single document that outlines how we
maintain passport processing time. Given this, we consider that collecting all the documents
which seek to manage our work in progress would require substantial collation. Therefore, I
must refuse this part of your request under 18(f) that the information requested cannot be
made available without substantial collation or research.
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 its website. All 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.
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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,
Kate Raggett
Manager Operational Policy and Official Correspondence
Service Delivery and Operations
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