{"id":548968,"date":"2026-07-29T04:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/548968\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T04:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:24:11","slug":"immigration-nz-faces-audit-after-bungled-tech-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/548968\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration NZ faces audit after bungled tech upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Immigration New Zealand is facing an independent financial audit after revelations that its bungled technology upgrade cost at least $6 million more than thought.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">At the time, she said more than $30m had been wasted with nothing to show for it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">On Wednesday, Stanford said her staff had since discovered an error in information provided by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">In response to questions, the ministry&#8217;s chief executive Nic Blakeley had advised her that another $6m in &#8220;associated project costs&#8221; had been identified.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;The chief executive informed my office today that he cannot be confident this further $6 million represents the full extent of expenditure&#8230; and he has made the decision to commission an independent financial audit,&#8221; Stanford said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">That raised &#8220;significant questions&#8221; about the ministry&#8217;s financial controls, so she had referred the matter to the public service commissioner and the Michael Heron inquiry that was currently underway, she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">The commissioner would also consider whether the inquiry&#8217;s scope needed to be widened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Immigration New Zealand is facing an independent financial audit after revelations that its bungled technology upgrade cost at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-548968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}