August 2019 | Read a plain text version of this newsletter

Message from Clare

Tēnā koutou, – hello.

Jeff Montgomery, General Manager Services and Access, is away on assignment until early October. While he's out of the office I am acting in the role.

At the DIA, we are on a journey – we’re transforming our services around our customers finding ways to make it easier for them to access our services. One aspect of this journey is our citizenship services, including the way we manage ceremonies.

As a local authority that conducts ceremonies on our behalf, you are one of our customers. We’ll also be asking for your feedback and input – the first opportunity for this is included in the newsletter below.

Over the next 6-12 months our teams will be using this newsletter as a key way to communicate any changes that may affect you. So please, keep an eye out for Choice in the coming months and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

Kia pai tō rā (Have a good day)
Clare

Clare Toufexis
Acting General Manager
Services and Access

Meet your citizenship ceremony team

Have you talked to or chatted over email with our citizenship ceremonies team recently? Put a friendly face to the name of each team member and learn a little more about them below.

John (separate) - I am the Team Leader of these three smiling individuals. The wider team also includes eleven other people involved in issuing marriage licences, birth, death and marriage certificates and administering the congratulatory message service. I’ve been with the Department 15 years and am looking forward to the all the benefits a new IT system will bring for us, you and candidates.

Losa (left) - Malo e lelei, I coordinate some ceremonies in the North Island from Auckland to Porirua, Christchurch in the South Island and overseas ceremonies. I have been in the team since January and with the Department over 2 years. I enjoy working with my 2 musketeers, we keep each other sane and try our best to get all our candidates into ceremonies as soon as we can.

Sarah (middle) - Kia ora! I’m the youngest - and best - part of our team. I’ve been part of Ceremonies since December last year (becoming full-time in May) and love being able to help others in their last step to becoming a NZ Citizen. I have a real passion for people (if you’ve talked to me you might have already figured this out!) and enjoy tea, coffee, and travelling.

Jason (right) - Clearly I’m the better looking one out of the three and that’s what really matters :). My role in the team is maintaining all council ceremonies in the South Island (minus a few) and in the North Island Central, South, Maungakiekie-Tamaki and Puketapapa, Auckland ceremonies and of course create and send off daily character checks. I love what I do and I’ve been in DIA coming up 22 years, but I’ve got the youngest and apparently the best to teach an old dog a few more tricks, cheers.

Update: Re-imagining citizenship ceremonies

In May's Choice newsletter we talked about Beth Davies and Valerie Poort's journey travelling the country meeting with people who organise ceremonies. We wanted to find out if there is a “typical” way of preparing for ceremonies, what the differences are between smaller and larger ceremonies, and to help identify opportunities for improving the experience both for councils and customers.

Thank you to everyone who gave Beth and Val your time – we really appreciate you taking part!

Your feedback: Proposed format for invitation by email

On our journey towards being more responsive and customer-focused, we are developing a new system that will enable attendee invitations to be sent via email rather than receiving a letter in the post.

We have drafted a new template for ceremony invitations and would like to share with you, so the content has not been finalized (see below). If you have questions, comments or concerns about the new template please email Arne.Murray@dia.govt.nz by Friday 9 August.

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