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Grant Citizenship

Good afternoon respected minister Request, there are over 26,000 residents waiting to become New Zealanders. Even when an application has been submitted correctly, the Citizenship Office's online citizenship timeframes webpage currently states 94% of applicants are granted citizenship within 19 months Soo poor system of assessment ???? Few of applications get result with in 2 to 6weeks but most of application's waiting time around 1 to 2 years that very frustration for Applicants. Requesting you for improve assessment system please. So people would get less waiting for assessment.apologise if any thing wrong with my (request)comment. What it's sound of common(immigrants)public who's completed all requirements for become New Zealander but still waiting...

How's auto system or auto checks work in application assessment

Please provide public how to prepare application as per auto check. And please provide data about what department try to improve backlog of application and reduce time frame of process


Response from
Department of Internal Affairs

Request received

Tēnā koe OIA request 24/25 0330 Request for Information About the Automated System used for Granting of Citizenship Thank you for your Official Information Act (Act) request received by the Department of Internal Affairs (Department) on 6 October 2024. You requested – 1. How's auto system or auto checks work in application assessment. 2. Please provide public how to prepare application as per auto check. 3. And please provide data about what department try to improve backlog of application and reduce time frame of process. An acknowledgement of your request was sent to you on 11 October 2024, which also asked for clarification of your questions. No response was received. Question three has been interpreted as asking for information on what the Department is doing to improve the backlog and wait time for processing citizenship by grant applications. In response to your request, I can provide you with the following information. Questions one and two The Department has received Official Information requests regarding the automated system used to process citizenship applications and responded to this question accordingly. I specifically would like to refer you to the following proactively released responses: OIA2324-0923 and OIA-2324-0649. Therefore, I must refuse this portion of your request under section 18(d) of the Act; that the information requested is publicly available. Question three Reducing processing timeframes for all applications is a priority for the Department. I can confirm that the Department has cross-skilled 28 staff in citizenship by grant in July and August 2024, and a further 6 in October 2024. Ten more staff have begun training in November 2024. This newly trained staff spend 75% of their time processing citizenship by grant applications, and 25% of their time on the other products offered by the Department. The newly trained staff brings the total Citizenship by Grant (CBG) Life, Identity Service Officers (LISOs) to 89, which will lift to 99 when the 10 are fully trained. As well as training more staff, the Department is also refining processing steps to ensure efficiency. The expectation is for these changes to significantly reduce the number of CBG applications, and therefore the time applicants wait, by March 2025 In case it may be of interest, citizenship by grant application processing data is updated on a monthly basis and can be found here: Status of Citizenship by Grant applications by date received at DIA. You may be interested to know that there is a lot of publicly available information online about citizenship and the timeframes for processing citizenship applications. The Department, for example, regularly proactively publishes Official Information Act responses on its website, including information about citizenship timeframes. Responses have been proactively released here: www.dia.govt.nz/Official-Information-Act-Requests-2 and you can search the responses by using ‘ctrl’ + ‘f’ and typing ‘citizenship’ in the search field. The most recent proactively released response will be towards the top of the page. 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. All requestor data, including your name and contact details, will be removed prior to release. The released response will be made available here: 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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