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Border Protection Upgrade delayed due to Immigration
Australia, November 4, 2010 – There has been a reported delay in the introduction of the generic visa portal by the Australia’s Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The said delay, which is the second time, is said to last until 2011 and will be hampering the department’s desire to fortify the country’s border protection. The first delay was in July and it was said to have been caused by the first hiccup in the Federal election, this according to DIAC chief information officer Bob Correll.
Currently, the system that was developed along with IBM is seen to be in need of further thorough testing.
The said delay is causing an aggravation to the IT sector which is generally relying on skilled workers from overseas to fill in the gaps in their work force. There were 457 visas that were made available through the generic visa portal and other skilled migration visas which will now have to rely on traditional visa application channels.
At present, there is only one in four visa application that is lodged electronically. The DIAC aspires to use the portal to help in boosting the application to 90 per cent and more of all the visa applications that are done through the Internet. The online visa application is one important factor in the Department’s initiative to perform advanced risk analysis of the applications that will also eliminate possible error.
The 2006 Palmer review which was a consequence of the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez what was prompted the reform in the process and systems. This lead to a $659 Systems for People information technology initiative which was led by Mr. Correll. The generic portal is said to be the last element that has to be rolled out.
October 30th is the scheduled date of the generic visa portal’s launch however, according to a DIAC spokesman who confirmed that though the said portal has been built and used by a limited number of staff in the State and Territory offices, the department is not yet confident to have it used more widely until such time that a rigorous testing has been concluded.
source:
itwire
