Our Future Services programme
We are building a customer-centric, modern immigration system to make it easier for people to use our services.
Building a better immigration system
The multi-year Our Future Services programme builds on work already done to deliver a trusted and effective immigration system.
The programme aims to 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 4 key areas:
- making visa processing more efficient
- mitigating risk of technology and service failure
- proactive and sophisticated risk management
- improved customer and user experience.
What’s next
Phase One is complete and has delivered meaningful progress and a strong foundation for future delivery work.
Many customers are reporting a better application experience, and new digital capabilities are helping make processing simpler, more consistent and more efficient.
We are pausing some parts of the programme while we reassess the programme. The reassessment will include looking at progress and lessons learned so far, and updating the programme's Business Case.
Once our current transition to ADEPT work is complete, we will pause further visa transitions while the reassessment is underway. In the meantime, we will focus on making the most of what we have already delivered and continue to improve the experience for both our customers and staff.
For more information on the Our Future Services programme, visit the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s website.
Our future services programme — Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
A more customer-centric Immigration New Zealand
One platform for visa submissions and processing
We are aiming to deliver the programme over 7 years. As part of the programme, the enhanced Immigration Online system – also known as ADEPT – will become the single customer submission channel and visa application processing system.
Customers can expect:
- a simpler, faster and more user-friendly application process
- smart application forms that ask customers for information specific to their situation
- increased self-service capabilities including being able to check their application status in real-time within their dashboard
- reduced average processing times for visas.
So far, we have transitioned three major visa groups to the enhanced Immigration Online system, with one more currently in progress – temporary entry visas for family of New Zealanders. More than half of all visa applications will soon be processed through enhanced Immigration Online.
The completed transitions are:
- Group and Tour Escort visitor visas in August 2026
- family of temporary visa holders in June 2026
- international student visas in August 2025.
Improved risk management
The programme will strengthen risk management across the immigration system, so we are better able to identify and respond to risk. Improved and integrated functionality in our systems will make more data and information readily available to staff to support quality decision making.
Designing our organisation to better suit our customers
As more products move to the 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 trained and deployed to best meet customer needs. We are currently working through what this looks like in practice.