Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator Vanstone. Will the minister update the Senate on the implementation of the largest ever IT systems upgrade at the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs?

Amanda Vanstone (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator McGauran for his question. We have a program called Systems for People, which we expect will completely transform the way DIMA does business through technology. The objectives of this program were formed by some independent reviews that were set up following the Palmer and Comrie reports to give us good and independent advice on the information technology and record management systems that we ran in the department. It is a very important part of the far-reaching reforms that will ensure that DIMA is more open and more accountable, that clients are dealt with fairly and reasonably, and in particular that staff are well trained and—where the IT particularly comes in—properly supported.

DIMA’s people need IT systems that are very easy to use and that support their work, and we are developing IT systems and infrastructure to improve their access to important information. We all remember the difficulties faced by a number of high-profile clients when staff who were trying to do the right thing were given IT systems that made it very difficult for them to access the relevant information across the department. Currently, when staff want to verify identity and see records of someone’s history they need to access a number of different systems and records. Therefore the current technology limits the quality, completeness and accuracy of the data that a staff member is looking at at any one time.

Over this four-year program, we will be able to provide staff and clients with much better systems. Firstly, we will be able to provide a single view of a single client’s interactions with the department. Secondly, we will have comprehensive processing for all DIMA staff based on various business roles. The new IT will establish consistency in work processes and decision making across the department and dramatically improve record keeping and quality assurance. In that way we expect to improve our data quality, ensuring data completeness and accuracy. That is important, because I recall the occasion when a person who, by a failure of record keeping, kept her Australian citizenship and was consequently refused entry into Australia by the previous Labor government and by this government. This was because of poor record keeping within the department.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ludwig interjecting—

Amanda Vanstone (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is record keeping under the previous government, Senator. It will reduce the fragmentation of information, data and systems. It will ensure that all of our systems are responsive to our changing business needs and will therefore improve our decision making by giving clearer operating instructions and appropriate decision support tools. The beneficiaries of this will of course be DIMA’s clients and also the departmental staff, who will be given the tools to enable them to do the job. This will cost $341 million in operating costs over four years and $153 million in capital over four years, coming to nearly $500 million.

The parliamentary secretary announced yesterday that DIMA has selected an IBM led consortium as the preferred partner. We expect that portals in DIMA’s business areas of border security, case management, compliance, working holiday makers and work and holiday visas to be the first to be brought online. They will enable a single view of the full records for someone associated with those areas. This will take some time but, as I indicated when the Palmer report came out, and then when the Comrie-Ombudsman report came out, the government is taking the opportunity to reform the whole department—not simply some areas that have been referred to in those reports. This is an example of our commitment to do that.