Depart Internal Affairs avoiding Questions about Immigration

Thank you for your response dated 7 August 2026 concerning OIA 2627-0040.

I seek clarification of the Department’s decision, particularly its interpretation of my request and its reliance on section 18(e) of the Official Information Act 1982 for the request as a whole.

Your response reproduces Questions 1–8, but does not provide a separate determination for each question or sub-question. Instead, the Department states that it has not identified any information within scope and then refuses the entire request under section 18(e).

Please therefore clarify, for each of Questions 1–8 separately:

Whether the Department’s position is that:

 

the requested information is not held;

the requested documents do not exist;

the documents could not be located despite reasonable efforts;

the subject matter falls outside the Department’s functions; or

some other basis applies.

What business groups, operational areas, record systems, databases, registers, or information-holding functions were consulted or searched before the Department concluded that no information within scope was held.

What “reasonable efforts” were undertaken to locate potentially responsive records before section 18(e) was relied upon.

I also seek clarification regarding Question 2.

My request expressly included records concerning “biometric or identity systems”. Your response states that the Department interpreted this wording as being limited to immigration processing, border technology, and migration-related activities, rather than the Department’s responsibilities for passports, citizenship, births, deaths and marriages, or wider identity-services functions.

That was not the limitation stated in my request.

The words “biometric or identity systems” were intended to include Department-administered identity systems and identity-related functions where records otherwise fall within the subject matter of Question 2.

Please therefore reconsider Question 2 on that basis and confirm whether any contracts, procurement records, memoranda of understanding, funding agreements, service schedules, supplier arrangements, data-sharing arrangements, biometric-system arrangements, or identity-system arrangements are held by the Department within that scope.

I also ask the Department to clarify whether section 14 of the Official Information Act was considered.

Your response states that significant parts of the request relate to immigration decision-making, border protection, enforcement, and associated matters outside the Department’s responsibilities. Please confirm:

whether the Department considered transferring any question or part of a question under section 14;

if transfer was not considered appropriate, why;

whether the fact that I had separately sent the request to other agencies affected that decision; and

whether the Department believes another agency holds information responsive to any component of Questions 1–8.

For clarity, I am not asking the Department to answer for Immigration New Zealand, Police, Customs, or another agency. I am asking the Department to identify and provide information actually held by DIA within the wording of the request, and to explain clearly where it does not hold information.

Please treat this as a request for clarification and reconsideration of the Department’s response before I decide whether an Ombudsman review is necessary.

Tracy Lynch