Immigration New Zealand head didn't tell select committee $35m IT project had been axed

The head of Immigration New Zealand failed to tell Parliament three months ago that a $35 million IT project had been axed, telling MPs there was no public review about its progress.

Unbeknownst to the March select committee meeting, the Biometric Capability Update (BCU) project had been abandoned in November and an independent report was nearing completion.

A political firestorm erupted last week when Immigration Minister Erica Stanford revealed officials had told her things "diametrically opposed to the truth".

Labour's immigration spokesperson Phil Twyford, who was asking questions of senior officials at the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) about the the progress of the Biometric Capability Update project in March, was outraged.

"What we know now is that at that point, when I asked them, the project had actually been cancelled, it had been disestablished, and that they'd had some had major ructions with their minister, including apologising to her for having misled them. So then they trot along to Parliament's education and workforce committee, and ... I think they treated us in exactly the same way as it's clear they did successive ministers."

Immigration New Zealand (INZ) is part of MBIE, and the ministry's deputy chief executive Alison McDonald headed INZ until retiring this autumn.

She responded to Twyford's questioning about independent reviews that warned about delivery risks and missed milestones.

She told the Parliament select committee that technology moves very quickly, and there were risks around delivery.

"We're - morphing is the wrong word - but actually we're working with DIA [Internal Affairs] and others about what does New Zealand need for identity going forward ... and we think that there may be a better all of government solution. So we're kind of exploring that as well. So that's why it's taking so long, because it's such an important part of the system."

However, according to last week's report, the reasons for the delays were down to failures dating back to 2020, including changes to the project's scope, staff turnover, and negotiations with a supplier.

When Twyford went on to ask her why no reports on the project had been released, McDonald said she didn't know, adding that reports had only been there to guide the programme internally, and there had been no need for a "public review".

At that stage, an independent consultant had already interviewed staff and his report was weeks away.

Obfuscation and lying by omission

Ministry chief executive Nic Blakeley - who sat alongside Stanford as she gave her a full-throttle outline of the apparent deception and wasted money last Tuesday - was also next to McDonald during March's select committee.

He told Twyford that officials would look into releasing reports, and echoed his deputy about the decisions ahead of them to improve identity management, BCU's key purpose. But he, too, did not point out the project had been cancelled the previous November.

No BCU information and quality assessment reports ever eventuated, Twyford added.

He said after already misleading ministers, officials "trotted along to see us and treated us with the same contempt".

"They omitted to tell us what was going on. They dissembled, and, and on no plain reading of the words of that transcript did they answer the question in a reasonable and upfront way. When some of the most senior officials in one of the biggest and most powerful government departments turns up to a committee and dissembles and lies by omission, I think that's that's got to be a bit of a wake-up call."

Twyford said Blakeley - who replaced MBIE chief executive Carolyn Tremain earlier this year - '"certainly would have known, because his minister was at that time on the warpath about this whole fiasco".

The axing of the BCU and the real reasons for its demise may have never come to light if Stanford had not revealed the true state of affairs, he said.

The minister said she had been told a fictional version of how "sound" the project was, when she was being asked for more funding.

"There's been a deliberate campaign to avoid accountability, by not being upfront and not providing the information that people were asking for, and the minister has documented this in relation to her attempts to hold the department accountable. And what this latest [March] episode shows is that senior MBIE officials were dissembling and deceiving parliament at the same time."

Stanford told MPs on Tuesday that INZ management may have had limited lines of sight of the failing project, as it had been taken out of the agency's control - still within MBIE - into its digital, data and insights division in 2022.

That was then headed by Greg Patchell, who was head of INZ when the project first began there between 2018 and 2021.

In a written statement an MBIE spokesman declined to comment on Twyford's remarks, or who the sponsors of the BCU were.

"The Terms of Reference for the Public Service Commission's inquiry into the Biometric Capability Update (BCU) have not yet been settled. It is not appropriate for us to get ahead of those Terms of Reference as they will likely cover all of these matters."