System fault auto-approved more than 55 visas and Job Checks
More than 55 visitor visas and employer Job Checks were approved automatically, with no officer assessing them, because of bugs in Immigration New Zealand's ADEPT system.
The cases came to light before the fault was found last year. Thirty-two were visitor visa applications auto-approved without manual assessment in the previous three years. Twenty-three were Job Check applications approved without manual assessment between February and November 2022, according to RNZ.
The cause was repetition, like pressing print twice and getting two copies. The fault let the same automated step run more than once on one application. That extra run created extra actions and skipped the step where an officer assesses the case.
This was not a policy decision. The law had allowed automated visa decisions, but Immigration New Zealand had not used that power before the fault. The agency said the system acted on its own.
Once the error was found, the agency reviewed the approvals. Twenty of the 32 visitor visas were later used for travel to New Zealand. Officials said there was no adverse outcome in those cases.
Six auto-approved applications were reopened for full assessment because of high risk factors. One was recommended for decline.
Remediation took two months. Earlier attempts to deploy the fix in October were complicated by wider Microsoft issues that affected the rollout.
A separate defect affected draft applications. Draft tourism or holiday applications with a secondary applicant added before the 23 August system update were prevented from submission. A permanent fix was applied on 26 August.
Immigration New Zealand notified Immigration Minister Erica Stanford about the auto-approved visas. That briefing put the fault and the scale of the auto-approvals before the minister.
ADEPT sits inside Immigration New Zealand's $336 million Our Future Services IT programme. That programme's predicted benefits were overstated by $134 million.
The broader context here is the difference between what the law allows and what the system is set up to do. Parliament can allow automation in law. The agency still has to control when it is used, how it is recorded, and how it can be reversed. Here the legal setting existed, but the use was unintentional and went undetected for a time.
Looking at what this means for ministers and senior officials, the questions are practical. How was the repeat run missed in testing and assurance. How quickly were the approvals isolated and reviewed once found. What audit trail existed to find every affected file. Those are standard expectations for any system that can grant a legal status.
In my view, the detail that will interest people who work in this area is the mix of scale and duration. A small number of Job Checks over ten months in 2022, and a small number of visitor visas over three years, points to an on-and-off fault rather than a full shift to automation. That makes it harder to spot. It also puts weight on the checks afterwards, the risk sorting, and the decision to reopen six cases while leaving the rest in place.
