Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 361: To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the full cost of the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service new computer system AISIP; if the system was fully tested before going live; the action the INIS is taking to address the backlogs in processing and the creating of correspondence arising from the new system; the reason the INIS was unable to ensure the transfer of all records to the new system from the old which has resulted in significant time now being wasted in view of the fact that staff have to check the new and old system databases when queries arise; and if his attention has been drawn to the fact that staff training of the system took place at a time when the system itself was unfinished and untested. [2029/12]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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1I am advised by the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS) that the Asylum & Immigration Strategic Integration Programme (AISIP) went live in October 2011. One of the principal aims of the new system is to ensure more efficient management of its cases by combining into one system over 20 stand-alone and disparate IT systems involving 69 separate types of applications and transactions. In any given year the system will record over 800,000 separate transactions. The project was delivered on budget and on time at a total cost of €9.3m for the development of the system and €3.9m on related project costs, such as hardware, software licences and other related costs. These costs are offset by income generated from fees and charges from immigration and related activities.

As well as being a very complex project, it was also the first ever project to address immigration related issues and transactions by taking a "whole of system" approach from the perspective of the client.

System testing was comprehensive, covering all modules of the system, and lasted four months, the latter two months involving user testing from all areas using the system.

With regard to training of staff a "train the trainer" approach was adopted with the aim of delivering the training as close as possible to go-live in order to maximum the benefit for staff. The training was provided after supplier testing of the system had been completed and the system functionality was available for training. Approximately 500 staff received several days' training each with some user testing to identify and resolve any final defects proceeding in parallel. This is a common approach with IT projects and helps minimise costs. Testing and training was planned to allow for a single phase rollout to INIS and related offices, with the aim of controlling costs and limiting the potential for data inconsistencies to occur between the new system and the older legacy systems.

The introduction of a new system together with related work practice changes has understandably had some initial impact on operations as the new system and processes are bedded down. This is not unusual with such large scale projects. INIS is working to address these aspects as quickly as possible. System updates are planned to address most aspects with the correspondence module within the coming weeks as well as implementing functionality to cater for new application types, etc. The approach taken to training has meant that staff who were selected and trained to deliver training to staff are available in their respective areas to provide ongoing mentoring and assistance to staff. Such flexibility from staff is one of the practical examples of the implementation of the Public Service Reform Plan and is to be commended.

With regard to the migration of data from old systems to the new, this was a complex part of the project involving taking data from many disparate systems that did not synchronise with each other and combining them in the new system. This also involved a very large data analysis task prior to go live with over 250,000 records reviewed and converted for use in the new database. In some instances, INIS decided not to migrate some older historic data as the cost and effort involved could not be justified. It is also the case that the data in the older systems continues to be available to the organisation in "read-only" mode to ensure accuracy and consistency. Work is ongoing to further refine the data stored in AISIP and to bring in some additional data from the old systems where this is justified.

As outlined above, there are significant benefits to INIS of a single integrated system with a single view of its clients, versus over 20 separate systems which had been developed in an ad-hoc manner over many years to address the multitude of immigration issues that had arisen in the context of the State's first ever experience of large-scale immigration. This system, like any new system of such size and complexity, will take time to bed down completely. As such it will provide its own challenges for its users; these will be addressed and the system itself provides a firm strategic foundation from which immigration administration can go forward.