Australian Immigration Daily News

The report published on Monday 11 February by ANAO indicates alarming inefficiency levels when it comes to processing citizenship applications.  The report originated as a result of the Office of the Commonwealth, the Refugee Council as well as several Members of Parliament expressing their interest in time it is taking to process citizenship applications.

The time to process citizenship application has prior to announcement of the proposed changes in April 2017 was 4 to 6 weeks.  As many may recall, the Department of Home Affairs placed processing of Citizenship applications on hold following this announcement and resumed processing the applications upon defeat of the draconian legislation which included proposal to increase English language efficiency for migrants, increase residency requirement as a permanent resident to four years as well as other character and security provisions.

Several complaints were also received from the general public expressing their concerns in relation to current processing times which is in excess of 12 months.

The objective of the audit was to examine the efficiency of the processing of applications for citizenship by conferral by the Department of Home Affairs.

To form a conclusion against the audit objective, the ANAO adopted the following high-level criteria:

1. Have applications for citizenship by conferral been processed in a time-efficient manner?

2. Have applications for citizenship by conferral been processed in a resource-efficient manner?

At the conclusion of the report, the finding appears to indicate that Applications for citizenship by conferral are not processed efficiently by the Department of Home Affairs.  As mentioned earlier, processing times have increased and long delays are evident between applications being lodged and decisions being taken on whether or not to confer citizenship. Significant periods of inactivity are evident for both complex and non-complex applications accepted by the department for processing.  In most cases applicants were not provided any updates in relation to their application (period of inactivity) for 12 months post lodgement.

The report appears to indicate that Department of Home Affairs has a suite of initiatives in train that are designed to improve efficiency, but implementation has been slow. It has not set external key performance indicators to inform Parliament and other stakeholders of how efficient it has been in processing conferral applications. Further, the department is not checking the quality of the decisions being taken.  Essentially now the programme appears to undergo very little (if any) quality control.

Another big indicator in slow down of the processing of the application is the number of citizenship tests undertaken in the last year, which has significantly declined.  This is a clear indication that applications are not assessed as quickly as they should.  There have been no major changes to the Citizenship Act to cause such extended delays (other than the temporary freeze of processing applications in 2017).

The report also indicates that the number of “complex” citizenship applications lodged with Home Affairs has also decreased.  Whilst this should ideally boost or speed up the processing time, the result is opposite.

Whilst it should be acknowledged that integrity screening in introduced in June 2017 as well as larger volume of applications lodged in 2017 has  contributed to the overall processing times, the report appears to indicate that efficient use of resources at the Department is a major contributing factor in the processing time increase.

The department has a suite of initiatives in train that are designed to enhance efficiency but has been slow in implementing them. The number of decisions taken in the first quarter of 2018–19 increased significantly (by 81 per cent) compared with the number taken in the first quarter of 2017–18, but remains below the number of decisions being taken in earlier years (2014–15 to 2016–17).

Some of the recommendations indicated on the report include:

1. Re-introduce externally reported key performance indicators of the time taken to decide applications for citizenship by conferral; and expand its published processing times to also report the time being taken to decide applications for citizenship by conferral per month, including decisions to refuse citizenship.

Department of Home Affairs’ response: Disagreed

2. The Department of Home Affairs establish and monitor performance standards that address periods of processing inactivity, including the length of time between an application being received and substantive processing work commencing.

Department of Home Affairs’ response: Agreed in principle.

3. The Department of Home Affairs agree with the Department of Finance a revised funding model for citizenship activities that is based on updated activity levels and efficient costs.

Department of Home Affairs’ response: Agreed.

Applicants can apply for one of four types of citizenship by application: descent; adoption; resumption; and conferral. Citizenship by conferral is the largest component. Of the 259,815 applications for citizenship lodged in 2017–18, 92 per cent sought citizenship by conferral.

The rate of decisions taken has been declining, falling far behind the lodgement rate. A backlog of applications on hand has resulted. Over the past four financial years the number of applications for citizenship by conferral:

• lodged increased by 25 per cent to be 239,413 in 2017–18;
• decided decreased by 47 per cent to be 101,422 in 2017–18; and
• on hand increased by 771 per cent to be 244,765 at 30 June 2018.

The ANAO calculated that, of the 101,422 decisions taken in 2017–18:

• 15 per cent occurred within 80 days of lodgement — 96 per cent of which were to decide the application was invalid for processing; and
• 80 per cent occurred within 337 days of lodgement — more than four times the former service standard.

Full copy of the report can be found here:

https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/efficiency-processing-applications-citizenship-conferral