The Auditor General’s Report on Immigration New Zealand is out.

June 5, 2009 by
Filed under: NZIS & Immigration issues 

There’s actually an awful lot to say about this – so it will probably be split over a few posts – otherwise we will be here all day. This report is the major review that was set up in the wake of the revelations that the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Labour (Mary Anne Thompson) had not only wangled the system to let her family gain residence to New Zealand, but that she also lied about her qualifications.

I think it is a bit unfortunate that once again the emphasis is on the Pacific Division, which is something that Mary Ann Thompson was responsible for setting up, but unlike the last report – this one does in fact deal with the Immigration New Zealand (INZ) as a whole. This is definitely a step in the right direction.

So firstly: the main findings!

1/ The Auditor General has discovered that there is excessive variation between the different branches of NZIS.
I think most of us could have told them that without having to spend a year investigating it.

2/ Targets were about the number of decisions made – not whether the right decision was made.
This one surprises me – as so many migrants I hear of seem to be stuck in an endless nightmare of not being able to get a decision. Maybe that comes down to point 1

3/ There’s a culture in which staff do not feel safe to raise concerns.
I personally couldn’t give a fig about this given the way they treat us applicants when we try and raise concerns. Maybe when they get round to sorting this out they can also publish their official complaints procedure!

4/ There’s a “Silo” culture and poor management practices.
This apparently means that different departments operate individually and do not consider INZ as a whole. This creates issue 1 – huge variations between different parts of INZ.

5/ The Pacific Island division was a mess.
It operated independently from the rest of INZ, and the auditor general has also reported that the DOL (Department of Labour – which is the Ministry that INZ reports to) knew full well that there were problems and did nothing about it.

6/ The Auditor General also clears Government Ministers of not acting earlier in relation to these issues.
It seems that they were not told of the full extent of the problems, because the CEO of immigration was not fully aware of the issues. Which sounds like an add-on to the whole problem of people being afraid to speak out about problems.

7/ The AG also highlights the fact that most of the staff in Immigration actually do a good job – and as a migrant myself I can attest to that. We have dealt with some top notch staff at NZIS over the years – people who do not deserve to be dragged down by the number of incompetent idiots who are also allowed to work in such a powerful position.

I sincerely hope this report is the first step to cleaning up NZIS.

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Related posts:

  1. Auditor Generals report on Immigration New Zealand – links
  2. Auditor General report – The NZIS computer system sucks.
  3. One Report about NZIS is out – one still to come.
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Comments

4 Comments on The Auditor General’s Report on Immigration New Zealand is out.

  1. William Knight on Sat, 6th Jun 2009 3:46 pm

    2. I think you should be concerned about 3. this is a gov organisation after all, and if the staff can’t talk to the managers then there is a serious, systematic problem with the service.

    It means that none of the other issues can be put right because the staff are not able to use their own initiative, and cannot suggest improvement.

    even when they see things failing they are unable to fix it.

    It’s typical of big institutions and big projects.

  2. admin on Sun, 7th Jun 2009 1:04 am

    3. Honestly – im not sure about this. Ive been reading into the report a bit more and its not really all that clear what this refers to. Im concerned that the Auditor General focused on Management problems (after all – the whole basis of the report was the wrongdoing of Thompson) rather than looking at the problems with the processes as a whole and the issues faced by migrants.

    Im left with the impression that they perhaps asked the wrong questions. At least as far as it would concern those of us that have faced issues with processing of applications :)

    Theres a lot to trawl through – so ill be blogging it bit by bit as I make my way through it – ill remember to add to link tomorrow if you want to read the report (its not easy to find).

    Hxxx

  3. Hubby on Mon, 8th Jun 2009 11:27 pm

    4. My thought on the report so far is that its an interesting insight into some internal problems, but completely misses the whole ‘customer facing’ issues NZIS have. A bit of a shame, naval gazing about ‘we could have done better’, but no substance about how to tackle the issues.

    Apart from it now being with the immigration minister to ‘fix’ NZIS. So it wasn’t the ministers responsibility before hand???

  4. Avalon on Tue, 9th Jun 2009 11:27 am

    5. So far the only responce from NZIS regarding our complain is “we could have done better but we do have a difficult job to do”. So im not really surprised.

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