September 2019 | Read a plain text version of this newsletter

In this issue:

• Changes over the next few months

• What will a customer application look like?

• Reminder - Choice Whiriwhiria book

Changes over the next few months

Following on from past newsletters, we wanted to give you some more information on changes we’re making to how we manage Citizenship by Grant applications.

You may be aware that our Citizenship by Grant customers currently have to apply using a paper application. We’ve spent a lot of time listening to our customers and to councils about what they need from us, and how they want us to deliver services.

From mid-October this year, we’ll start to offer some Citizenship by Grant customers the opportunity to apply online. We are starting with adult customers and will be extending this early next year to children, groups, and Western Samoan customers.

While this work has been happening, we’ve taken the opportunity to look at streamlining our other citizenship processes, including how we can make things easier for local authorities – as well as customers. We want to make it more efficient for you to manage ceremonies, as well as to provide information to customers.

There will be a transition period for this work, and we wanted to give you some information about what changes to expect starting in the new year, how we think this will impact numbers of people attending ceremonies, and what opportunities you will have to input into this work.

What changes will you see first?

Our ceremonies team will have a new system for managing ceremonies. This will be launched in February next year and will continue to be refined and enhanced in 2020.

For local authorities some of the changes that you will see are:

• We’ll be able to provide automated customer seating allocation for your venues and provide you with a seating plan (if your venue requires one)
• We’ll be providing customers with an email invitation to their ceremony. This means that some customers may bring their email to a ceremony with them rather than a letter. You’ll have an opportunity to give more detailed feedback on the template soon
• Our internal teams, including our call centre, will have better visibility of the details of the ceremony a customer has been allocated to. This means that we’ll be able to assist customers with information and we expect it will result in less calls to you
• We’ll be able to automatically generate attendee lists and provide these to you via an Excel spreadsheet, so you can use it more easily for your mail merge requirements

What effect will this have on the number of customers attending a ceremony?

For a period of time we expect that there may be impacts on the number of customers attending ceremonies. We’ve completed some forecasting on what we expect this to look like so you can plan your venues for the New Year. The graph below shows the number of customers that we have forecasted to be available to attend ceremonies each month.

This expected change in numbers (both decreases and increases) is because we are implementing a new online channel and application management system.

We are implementing the new system in a number of stages, with the functionality to manage ceremonies set to go live in February. This means that, up until that time in February, there will be a number of online applications that will be held until the new ceremonies management functionality is available. As a result, it is likely that there will be more customers waiting to be scheduled into a ceremony through March and April.

We have timed this to coincide with the Christmas/New Year period, as we know that councils run fewer ceremonies during this time. However, we do believe that there may be some impact on you.

We’ve have broken this down for each local authority, so you can see how this directly impacts you. The spreadsheet will be emailed to you immediately after this newsletter is issued. If you do not receive the spreadsheet by the end of the day contact Vaughan.Millar@dia.govt.nz.

We’re aware that this is not an ideal situation for you, and that you may have some concerns.  Over the next few months we will continue to give you regular updates, so that you have as much visibility as possible over what’s happening, and to help you with planning and managing your ceremonies.  

What will a customer application look like?

Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming next month when we launch Citizenship by Grant adult applications online. The application form that customers will use will look similar to the following screenshots:

Application hub (home page)

Questions on oath or affirmation, if family are applying and do they need special assistance?