Recent 189 Visa processing times

[Kevin]

There has been some recent talk about the change in service standards for visa processing times. I thought a slightly more detailed look at publicly available data might help those who, like myself, are patiently waiting.

 

The following figures are based on data drawn from myimmitracker.com on 15 March 2017 for the current (partially completed) cycle, and the two previous visa allocation cycles. Figure 1 shows the (smoothed) probability mass, while Figure 2 is the cumulative distribution. If anyone is interested, the data strongly follows a log-normal distribution.

 

Figure 1: Distribution of days-to-grant. To facilitate presentation the curve is smoothed with a simple moving average.

 

Figure 2: Cumulative distribution of days-to-grant. Jagged curves are raw data; smooth curves are fitted log-normal distributions. Black curve is log-normal fitted to both 2016/2017 standard deviation and the published processing times.

 

So far, the 2016/2017 cumulative distribution below 90 days of waiting follows the 2015/2016 cumulative distribution quite well. Things may initially look bad waiting periods above 90 days, as the curve seems to peters out. However, many of those cases may not have been reported yet, so we simply do not know what the distribution of the longer waiting times will be. This means that the shaded green area may become filled, or at least partially filled, as more data for the 2016/2017 period becomes available.

 

Note that the actual distribution may differ from the reported data on myimmitracker. Anyway, I am posting this in case someone finds the data interesting.

 

Edited March 20, 2017 by Kevin
typographical correction

[MichKen]

This is fascinating stats, of course there are a great deal of the applications not detailed on immitracker but this does seem to tie back to the current published average service times, so it's clearly a good sample to draw from.  My only concern of this would be that from lodgement there are so many variables that impacts on processing times once the visa is lodged.

I would love to see a graph depicting processing times from providing requested information to grant, as I believe this will be a better indicator of service times and also how many additional information requests per visa application, as I believe these are applicant based delays.  I have seen as many as twelve information requests on immitracker.

[Kevin]

Hi @MichKen. I'll come back to this later this evening. The distribution of the number of days from the evidence reported date to the grant date would be interesting to look at.

[Kevin]

@MichKen, here are the distributions you requested. It would seem that in the early period of the 2016/2017 cycle, the waiting period after providing evidence was shorter on average than it was in the preceding cycle. However, there may also be a large backlog of more recent incomplete cases which remain to be reported. These could significantly alter our view of the distribution after sufficient time has elapsed for those cases to become resolved.

 

Figure 1 : Distribution of days evidence-to-grant. To facilitate presentation the curve is smoothed with a simple moving average.

 

Figure 2: Cumulative distribution of days evidence-to-grant. Jagged curves are raw data; smooth curves are fitted log-normal distributions. Distributions are scaled according to the proportion of cases that have been granted after evidence being provided, under the possibly thin assumption that the unreported cases remain to be granted.

 

[MichKen]

Wow! @Kevin Thank you so much for this! Really is fascinating to read... and seems  (if I'm reading this correctly) to confirm some of my own suspicions including that once all evidence is provided this is a more accurate predictor of when you will receive your grant.

So it would seem then that many more of complete cases are initially being dealt with quicker, within 0-50 days, than previously and that on average the days to grant should be just short of 50 days after providing evidence (I'm assuming calendar days and not business days here?).

Seems much more consistent, which does confirm my suspicions in regards to this that applicants mainly contribute to the length of time it takes to finalize the grant. It seems that once evidence is provided it should, on average, be around 6 or so weeks later you get the grant if your application is fully complete and fairly straightforward.

There are cases clearly taking longer and from my reading of the information on this site, it's the verifications that seem to cause some of these delays, where some critical information needs to be confirmed such as employment or a migrating/non migrating child / health issues.  Some countries applicants also seem to wait longer than others.... and have higher instances of this type of verification.

This certainly answers many of my questions! Thank you again!

 

The comforting part is that the waiting is not as indefinite as it currently feels ?