Efficiency of the Processing of Applications for Citizenship by Conferral

Paragraph 3.56

The Department of Home Affairs agree with the Department of Finance a revised funding model for citizenship activities that is based on updated activity levels and efficient costs.

Department of Home Affairs’ response: Agreed.

20. The proposed audit report was provided to the Department of Home Affairs, which provided a summary response that is set out below. Its full response is reproduced at Appendix 1.

There is no greater privilege than Australian Citizenship and the Department takes its responsibility to efficiently and effectively process applications within the law very seriously. The enhanced integrity measures adopted by the Department over the last three years to protect Australia’s national security and community safety are delivering results. We will always prioritise these efforts over speed.

The Department disagrees with the ANAO findings that the processing of citizenship applications has not been done efficiently.a The proportion of citizenship applications being refused has doubled, from 3.4 per cent in 2014–15 to 6.8 per cent in 2018–19 to 30 November 2018. This includes 144 individuals who were identified as having engaged in serious criminal conduct that was not declared on their citizenship application form and 1, 440 instances of potential identity fraud, where individuals have provided different identity information on their citizenship application to that previously provided to the Department between August 2016 and October 2018. Twenty-nine individuals had their Australian Citizenship revoked since December 2014 for criminal conduct or citizenship or migration fraud and 12 individuals ceased to be an Australian Citizen, either because they have engaged in terrorism-related conduct offshore, or been in the service of a declared terrorist organisation offshore.

The Department dedicates significant resources to addressing these national security, community safety and program integrity risks and notes that cases with adverse indicators take a disproportionate level of effort and time to resolve, often requiring the assistance of various other agencies and partners.

The Department also disagrees with the ANAO recommendation that we should publish further information, particularly around key performance indicators of processing times. Given that each application for citizenship is assessed upon its merits and individual circumstances, in our view this information would not be meaningful and may be misleading to our clients.b

The Department acknowledges that it must continue to evolve the way it operates to keep pace with increased lodgements and changing risk profiles. System-wide reforms to the way the citizenship program is delivered are well underway with a 97 per cent increase in citizenship finalisations this financial year to date (July to the end of November 2018), compared with the same period in the previous year (July to the end of November 2017)c and near record numbers of people are expected to become Australian Citizens on Australia Day 2019.

The Department continues to implement initiatives under its reform program, including measures that take account of issues identified by the ANAO in this audit, and expects these will result in further improvements to efficiency and processing times.

a: Chapter 2 of this Auditor-General report outlines the evidence and analysis in support of the ANAO’s independent assessment of the department’s time efficiency, including that processing times have increased, long delays are evident between applications being lodged and decisions being taken on whether or not to confer citizenship, along with significant periods of inactivity being evident. Similarly, chapter 3 examines resource efficiency.

b: The lack of externally reported key performance indicators for processing time efficiency means transparent and meaningful information is not being provided to the Parliament and other stakeholders so as to hold Home Affairs accountable for its performance. Publishing service standards and targets, and performance against them, is an approach used in other countries (see paragraph 2.28).

c: Paragraphs 3.19 and 3.20 recognise that the number of decisions in the early part of 2018–19 was well above the equivalent period in 2017–18. The ANAO’s analysis, outlined in Figure 3.1, was that the number of decisions taken in the early part of 2018–19 nevertheless remained well below that being achieved prior to 2017–18.