17 December 2021
45 Pipitea Street, Wellington 6011
Phone +64 4 495 7200
dia.govt.nz
Thayr
fyi-request-17596-
[email address]
Tēnā koe Thayr
OIA request 21/22 0415 Request for Request for citizenship data
Thank you for your Official Information Act (Act) request received by the Department of Internal
Affairs (Department) on 16 November 2021.
You requested –
1. Can I get how many unallocated paper citizenship application per month between Jan
2021 to April 2021 ?
2. Can I get how many unallocated online citizenship application per month between Jan
2021 to April 2021 ?
3. Also can we get those information monthly upload it on citizenship website instead keep
asking for it here ?
You then advised in an email of 9 December 2021 –
Just for clarification I am asking for the remain unallocated application per month between Jan
2021 to April 2021.
As explained in our reply of 14 December 2021, we had interpreted the initial wording of your
request to be for the average number of unallocated applications per month.
In accordance with section 15(1AA) of the Act, your clarified request was therefore to be
treated as a new request, replacing the original. We advised the deadline for response changed
accordingly to 27 January 2022, but that we would respond as soon as practicable.
I can now confirm in response to your request that the Department will release the data you
seek on our website here;
www.govt.nz/citizenshiptimeframes, and will continue to provide
monthly updates. We anticipate having the first set of data published within the next week.
The information requested in questions one and two is therefore refused pursuant to section
18(d) of the Act; the information requested is or will soon be publicly available.
As noted in previous correspondence to you, the Department has now responded to several
requests from you for information relating to citizenship processing timeframes. I would again
like to confirm that the Department has no further information to provide regarding the
citizenship backlog and processing timeframes, and considers the responses already provided to
you to have been comprehensive.
I also again wish to acknowledge the frustration experienced by many surrounding the current
citizenship processing times and can assure you the Department has initiatives underway to
reduce the citizenship application backlog, speed up processing, and improve general customer
experience.
Should you have an application in that is of concern to you, I encourage you to contact the
citizenship office directly on 0800 22 52 52 or
at [email address] for an update.
However, I trust this letter has addressed the last of your concerns regarding official
information.
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:
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
Page 2 of 2