New Zealand’s online visa system went rogue and started approving applications without human assessment, the immigration department has admitted.
The fault allowed 32 visitor visas to be granted, including one that was later recommended for decline after six were reassessed due to high risk factors, along with 23 Job Check applications.
The glitch affected Immigration New Zealand’s ADEPT system, which is part of a trouble-plagued NZ$336 million project, and comes after another system issue that resulted in visa applicants not being asked to provide X-rays despite coming from countries with high incidences of tuberculosis.
The latest fault was discovered last year, and IMZ then notified Immigration Minister Erica Stanford, telling her “immediate action was taken to investigate the cause, and a full sweep conducted to identify any other cases”, RNZ reported.
“To date, 23 Job Check applications have been identified as having been approved without manual assessment between February and November 2022,” INZ told the minister.
“Technical Advisors have reviewed all 32 auto-approved Visitor Visa applications. Twenty of those visas have been used for travel to New Zealand with no adverse outcome noted.”
INZ online services director Katy MacLeod said the technical fault resulted in “unexpected duplication of actions and a bypass of manual assessment”, and that a fix took two months to complete due to “wider Microsoft issues”.
Legislation is in place enabling automated decisions, but INZ had not sought to allow the system to do so, saying last year it was about two years away from being able to do it competently.
Last week government officials confirmed that $50.7 million in taxpayers money had been wasted on Immigration New Zealand’s botched and abandoned Biometric Capability Upgrade.
The project was dumped last year, and Ms Stanford said staff deliberately withheld information from her and her Labour predecessor, and called advice she was given “complete fiction”.
Header image: Erica Stanford and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (National).
