Dear Department of Internal Affairs,

Regarding OIA request 22/23 0911
https://fyi.org.nz/request/22969/respons...

QUESTION
“3. In the same bucket, are applications assigned to a case office based on the principal of "first in first served"? If not, what are the criteria?”

RESPONSE (by Kate Raggett - Manager Operational Policy and Official Correspondence Service Delivery and Operations)
“Yes, applications in each workstream are allocated in order, based on the date the application was submitted.”

This means in a specific workstream, if one (or more than one) application submitted in a specific month has been allocated or approved (an application must be allocated first before having been approved), ALL applications submitted prior to that specific month (in this same workstream) must have been (at least) allocated or approved.

According to the Appendix 1
https://fyi.org.nz/request/22969/respons...

As at the 6th June 2023, all workstreams from 1 to 5 already had (all or some) applications submitted in Jan 2023 allocated and/or approved.
This means, on the 6th June 2023 or later, ALL applications submitted before Jan 2023 and were in workstreams from 1 to 5 must have been allocated already.

According to this data, as at the 7th July 2023, there were many applications submitted before Jan 2023 had not been allocated yet.
(Apr 2022 – 122 applications had not been allocated; May 2022 - 859; Jun 2022 - 764; July 2022 – 707, etc.)
https://catalogue.data.govt.nz/dataset/e...

There’re only 3 possibilities regarding the statement (response) by Kate Raggett “Yes, applications in each workstream are allocated in order, based on the date the application was submitted.”:

1. Possibility 1 – The statement is correct, which means ALL these applications (which were submitted in and had not been allocated) were in the workstream 6 only.

Is this possibility correct?
If so, please provide a breakdown of all applications in the workstream 6 (e.g., 500 submitted in Aug 2022; 400 submitted in Sep 2022, etc.)
If not, go to possibility 2 below.

2. Possibility 2 - The statement is NOT correct, AND Kate Raggett did not know it was not correct but stated anyway.

Is this possibility correct?
If so (i.e., Kate Raggett did not know what she was talking), is she capable of doing her job?
If not, go to possibility 3 below.

3. Possibility 3 - The statement is NOT correct, AND Kate Raggett KNEW it was not correct but stated anyway, i.e., Kate Raggett deliberately lied.

Is this possibility correct?
If so (i.e., Kate Raggett deliberately lied), does she have the integrity remain at her job?
If not (i.e., all the 3 possibilities above are incorrect), what is the explanation?

Yours faithfully,

Kaizu

Dear Department of Internal Affairs,

"1. Possibility 1 – The statement is correct, which means ALL these applications (which were submitted in and had not been allocated) were in the workstream 6 only." should read:

"1. Possibility 1 – The statement is correct, which means ALL these applications (which were submitted before Jan 2023 and had not been allocated) were in the workstream 6 only."

Yours faithfully,

Kaizu