11 April 2022
45 Pipitea Street, Wel ington 6011
Phone +64 4 495 7200
dia.govt.nz
Sebastian
fyi-request-18550-
[email address]
Tēnā koe Sebastian
Official Information Act request 2122-0628 – Citizenship timeframes
Thank you for your Official Information Act (Act) request received by the Department of Internal
Affairs (Department) on 9 February 2022.
You have asked for information about the timeframe for improvements to the Department’s
online citizenship system, our intentions to publish data in a different format, and when we
expect citizenship applications to be completed within a 3 to 5 month timeframe.
As explained in response to your request OIA 2122-0577, the new case management system is
being designed iteratively, with new features and functionality being developed progressively.
Improvements to speed up processing are a priority and are being made continuously.
We are now in a position to implement a series of changes which will make greater use of the
system’s automated checking ability and expect this to have a significant impact on the backlog
in the next month and reduce processing times, on an on-going basis.
The Department anticipates that the current citizenship application waiting times will reduce by
mid-2022.
The Department has chosen to publish data that provides the best overal picture of the number
of unal ocated citizenship applications. This information is accurate and provides our customers
with the most up to date information available. We wil take into account your feedback in
considering what other information we could proactively publish.
I need to clarify that your belief that the Department has over 300,000 pending citizenship
applications awaiting processing is incorrect. The most recent figure on the www.govt.nz of
37,089, is the total number of unallocated citizenship applications.
We are mindful that citizenship is of great importance to applicants and waiting is frustrating. I
can assure you that we are doing everything we can to make sure we process applications as
quickly as we can.
