Our Future Services programme
We are building a customer-centric, streamlined immigration system to make it easier for people to use our services.
Building a better immigration system
The seven-year Our Future Services programme builds on work already done to deliver a trusted, world-class immigration system.
The programme will deliver a more cost-effective immigration system that is more productive, more effective at managing immigration risk and provides a better experience for our customers and staff. It is designed to address four key areas:
- making visa processing more efficient
- mitigating risk of technology and service failure
- proactive and sophisticated risk management
- improved customer and user experience.
A more customer-centric Immigration New Zealand
One platform for visa submissions and processing
As part of the of programme, the enhanced Immigration Online platform - also known as ADEPT - will eventually become the single customer submission channel and visa application processing system.
What customers can expect:
- a simpler, faster and more user-friendly application process
- submitting an application will require fewer interactions with our staff as smart application forms ask customers for the information we need up front
- customers will be able to check their application status through an online portal rather than by contacting our service centre, regardless of application type
- consistently reduced average processing times for visas – as seen from previous product transitions, such as permanent resident visas.
The next products to transition to enhanced Immigration Online are:
- student visas in August 2025
- visitor visa groups in March 2026.
Designing our organisation to better suit our customers
As more products move to enhanced Immigration Online and our risk management capabilities improve, we will be able to design our organisation around getting the best outcomes for our customers.
An efficient and fully digital immigration system will mean that our workforce can be recruited, trained and deployed to best meet customer needs. We’re currently working through what this looks like in practice.
World-class risk management across the immigration system
The programme will strengthen risk management across the immigration system so we’re better able to identify risk and respond to it earlier. Improved and integrated functionality in our systems will make more data and information readily available to staff to support quality decision-making.
An Immigration Harm Index is also currently in development, which will use data and insights to provide a baseline dollar value of harmful immigration outcomes. It will help customers and the public understand how we identify immigration harm and why we use a variety of proportionate tools to address it.