News

Visitors applying for a short-term visa to Papua New Guinea now usually hear back in minutes. Since early 2025, around 95 per cent of those applications have been decided automatically, where the wait used to be about two weeks.

The change comes from the MyICSA Analysis Engine, which we built with the Immigration and Citizenship Services Authority (ICSA) and Amazon Web Services. It’s the first known deployment of generative AI in a government production environment in the Pacific Islands.

How it works

The engine sits inside ICSA’s eVisa platform. It reviews each application against ICSA’s own rules, approves the straightforward ones and passes anything that needs a closer look to an immigration officer, so people keep the decisions that need judgement.

It was introduced carefully and tested thoroughly before it went live, and it now works around the clock.

“Our average short-term visa processing time is down to four minutes.”

Wellington Navasivu, Chief Migration Officer, ICSA, in the AWS case study

What it means

For travellers, it means an answer in minutes. For ICSA’s officers, it means more time for the cases that need their judgement. We’re very proud of what the ICSA team and ours have built together.

Amazon Web Services has published the case study, and Business Advantage PNG covered it in Papua New Guinea begins paving the road to digital government. Read more about our visa and border work.