Published on the 27/03/2025 | Written by Heather Wright
More automation planned for single system…
The New Zealand Cabinet has approved a $336 million program to modernise New Zealand’s visa immigration system with a single, cloud-based application submission and processing platform which includes automation and integration of a risk analytics platform.
The Our Future Service program will see the system of multiple submission or processing systems, where visa applications are split across five submissions including 15 percent being paper based, consolidated onto the single platform based on the Adept system completed in 2022.
“Task automation is used to improve efficiency, but with only a small number of products on Adept, we are not yet leveraging the opportunities this presents.”
MBIE says Our Future Services will deliver ‘productivity gains’ through introducing task automation across all visa products. Connecting the risk analytics platform to Immigration New Zealand’s Adept visa processing platform will enable end-to-end automated decision-making on ‘low-risk’ applications for ‘some’ products.
“Productivity gains will result in an increase in the number of visa reductions made each day. For example, processing of Student visa products in Adept will enable a 30 percent increase in the number of applications decided each day.”
The approval for the project comes as New Zealand’s digital health services face huge cuts, with more than 1,000 jobs – or nearly half of all roles – to be cut and $100 million a year to be slashed from the budget.
Our Future Services builds on work already done over the past five years, including the $57 million Microsoft-based Adept platform – dubbed Inept by some after reports it initially resulted in delayed visa applications and requests for medical checks even when they had already been provided.
Built on Microsoft Power Platform, it is the core technology platform, with 35 percent of visa applications currently submitted and processed via Adept. (Should you be interested, Adept stands for Advanced Digital Employer-led Processing and Targeting.)
MBIE says the new work will accelerate building all visa products onto Adept to provide a single submission and processing channel within seven years, rather than the 12 years at the current pace and cost of delivery.
Last year Cabinet noted the immigration system faced ‘enduring challenges’ with inefficient visa processing, increasing risk of technology and service failure, reactive and unsophisticated risk management and poor customer and user experience.
Under the current system, connected visa applications are often made in separate platforms – and Accredited Employer Worker Visa application is made in Adept, but applications for dependents of the worker are done through other platforms.
Significant amounts of processing work are also done manually given a reliance on legacy platforms and paper. That includes data entry, scanning or returning documents and submitting documents through portals for external checks. Only the Employer Accreditation and Job Check applications under the Accredited Employer Work Visa policy are the only products in Adept that are automated end-to-end, because they use system rules.
“Task automation is used in Adept to improve efficiency, but with only a small number of products on Adept, we are not yet leveraging the opportunities this presents.
“Without connecting a risk analytics platform to Adept we are not in a position to introduce end-to-end automation for other visa products.”
Automation, however, has proved a contentious issue for Immigration NZ. It has previously been insistent that it isn’t using automation to make decisions about who is allowed into New Zealand.
The Our Future Services business case to Cabinet says the new program of work will improve efficiency of services, reducing inconsistencies and manual work and removing paper applications, and enable faster visa processing with automation enabling quicker decision making as staff focus on tasks requiring judgement and decision-making rather than admin tasks.
Health, character and identity checks would be automated across all visas.
Risk management will also be ‘matured’.
“Across visa processing, border, customer engagement, investigations and compliance, we will ensure we are collecting and making the best use of data to identify and respond to emerging and changing risk.”
Staff having access to the ‘right data at the right time’ will enable more efficient and better-informed decisions to keep risk offshore and facilitate ‘genuine travel’.
The project will also see enhanced identity capabilities to collect information from source, including liveness detection checks (real-time checks to verify a face image belongs to a real person rather than being a depiction of someone’s face) and eChip passport readers.
Improved information sharing across government agencies and external partners, is also touted, with the document hinting at work with the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service on their planned improvements to systems and business processes, but details of that work is redacted.
The Cabinet paper says the project will also remove reliance on increasing staff numbers as demands increase and streamline processes for customers, improving customer experience.
Our Future Services will be delivered over seven years, in three phases, with the first phase, due to be completed next June, based around recruitment and development of supporting strategies, ahead of ‘accelerated delivery’.
The project, with its ‘estimated’ cost of $336 million is expected to deliver around $453 million in benefits with ongoing annual net savings of $80 million.
An October 2024 review of the program noted it as ‘amber’ for risk – successful delivery is feasible but there are ‘significant’ issues requiring management attention. That amber ranking, however, is ‘considered normal’ at this point in development and should trend to amber/green once staffing, planning and governance preparations are completed and there is a clear steer for funding allocation and portfolio prioritisation.
