2 February 2023
Immigration Lawyers New Zealand
[FYI request #24878 email]
DOIA 2324-1325
Tēnā koe Immigration Lawyers New Zealand
Thank you for your email of 14 December 2023 to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
requesting, under the Official Information Act 1982, the following:
My understanding is that INZ maintains a Microsoft Word version of the immigration instructions
and all they have to do really is to print the documents as PDF. The practice of making available
the immigration operational manual in PDF format has continued for at least for 13 years, as I
stil have my 2010 version, and as far as I can ascertain, the downloadable links were live at least
until March 2023. To that end I would like to request the fol owing information:
1. What was the standard operating procedure for publishing the manual in PDF, prior to making
the decision to stop providing the manual in PDF files. I do not believe that an officer would have
been required to convert each page of the online version to PDF. All PDF versions in my possession
show that they were converted from Microsoft Word documents. Further, each PDF files have a
table of contents that have clickable links allowing me to jump to the relevant heading when
clicked - which would not be possible if the online version was converted to PDF.
2. Which department was responsible for publishing the manual in PDF?
3. What was the frequency of the production (update) and publication of the manual in PDF for
each year for the last five years (excluding Internal Amendment Circulars, Policy Amendment
Circulars, VisaPaks)
4. Who was involved in the decision-making process for deciding to stop producing the manual in
PDF files?
5. What did the decision-making process involve? Please provide relevant information, documents,
communication records, etc.
6. Was there a cost benefit analysis? If so, please provide relevant details.
Our Response
Questions 1-3. The primary mechanism for accessing the full set of immigration instructions is the online
Operational Manual, which is publicly available a
t www.immigration.govt.nz/opsmanual. Content in the
online Operational Manual is collated and published using a system called AuthorIT. A secondary
function of this publishing is the ability to produce text and PDF versions of the full set of immigration
instructions.
Due to compatibility issues with the software and platform used for AuthorIT, it became problematic to
create a text document version of the instructions each time it changed. As a consequence, the PDF
versions of the instructions become out of date. The PDF versions were available prior to the end of April
2023, but these were notably out of date. A decision was made to prioritise the online version and as
such there is no current PDF version of the manual.
The INZ Operational Policy team was responsible for publishing the Operational Manual and updating
any downloadable files. This team updates the Operational Manual each time an amendment circular is
distributed.
Prior to 2020, a smaller number of amendment circulars were distributed each year and the PDFs were
updated each time the online Operational Manual was updated. Since 2020, a large volume of changes
to immigration instructions have been made. For example, 74 amendment circulars were sent out in
2022 and 15 had already been sent out by the end of April 2023. The large volume of changes to
immigration instructions and the online operational manual, combined with software compatibility
issues, meant that the PDF version of the operational manual were not updated as frequently.
Questions 4-6. The INZ Operational Policy and Digital Channels teams were involved in the decision to
stop publishing the manual in PDF format. A number of discussions were held between the two teams,
where the Digital Channels team noted that the page views for the pdf files had been low. Please refer
to the Appendix for records of these discussions and note duplicated email chains have been removed
and some information has been marked as out of scope. The main consideration was ensuring that
accurate and up to date information remains available to customers. This is achieved by distributing
amendment circulars when immigration instructions change and updating the online, searchable version
of the Operational Manual that is publicly available on the INZ website. Removing the PDF version of the
immigration instructions avoids duplication of information and enables us to focus resources on keeping
the online Operational Manual as up to date as possible. No specific cost-benefit analysis was
undertaken given the very low usage of the PDF versions and the fact that they were already out of date
at the time they were removed from the website.
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.
If you wish to discuss any aspect of your request or this response, please contac
t [email address].
Nāku noa, nā
Karen Bishop
General Manager
Service Design and Implementation
Immigration New Zealand
Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment
