Decades-old Home Office asylum system misses EOL deadline, no new timetable in place

The UK’s Home Office has failed to meet its own deadline for the retirement of a decades-old immigration database in a program vital to cutting the backlog of asylum claims, currently at historic highs. The government department in charge of policing, immigration and borders said plans to end use of the Casework Information …

[cyberdemon]

Double keying..

> caseworkers were expected to use CID and its replacement, dubbed Atlas, and had to “double key” information between them.

If you want your "caseworkers" to quit en-masse, get them to do all of their work in duplicate..

[Tom Chiverton 1]

Re: Double keying..

Helps with a 'hostile environment' if your case never gets processed...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the old one works well and meets the spec...

(hah!)

[Snowy]

Just burn everything

It worked so well for the people on the Windrush why not repeat it!!

*** Warning Post contain sarcasm ***

[elsergiovolador]

Why why why

Oh why would you change the system that works?

Some business people owning accommodation are making a killing at the expense of the tax payer, who is very generous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why why why

Risk

If it's based on VB6, that's effectively an unsupported platform, or practically so. Plenty of greybeards like me who know the syntax, but it's not where the hip kids are. What happens when the 16-bit ODBC drivers are incompatible with some network or database revision or new versin of Windows?

If the business process is fit for purpose, that's one thing. Antique tech is a different thing altogether.

What's the betting that upgrades have deferred for year after year because of 13 years of "austerity"?

What's the betting that Pritti or Suella voted for those cuts?

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Why why why

Plenty of greybeards like me who know the syntax, but it's not where the hip kids are. What happens when the 16-bit ODBC drivers are incompatible with some network or database revision or new versin of Windows?

That's perfect if you own a big consultancy and you can bill by the day. Hire hip kids on the cheap and charge Home Office eye watering rates for their service figuring out what this Visual Basic is. If some data gets corrupted? Even better, more services to sell!!!

You just need to be on one of them VIP lanes.

[Martin M]

Re: Why why why

"effectively an unsupported platform, or practically so"

VB6 IDE passed out of extended support *15 years* ago. No "effectively" or "practically" about it. I'd say it's remarkable it can even reliably connect to a modern Oracle database, but I have a suspicion that the one they're using will be of a similar vintage and support status.

[Jon 37]

Re: Why why why

There's a migration path from VB6 to VB.net. They could migrate the code to a modern development platform, while making no other changes to it.

That would solve the issue with an unsupported software stack.

If they wanted an even better software stack, they could port that VB.net code to C#. That is a widely used programming language, making it easier to recruit developers.

Then they could spend some time cleaning up that VB6-style C# code.

[keithpeter]

stocks and flows

Can't reduce backlog of claims until this (these) systems are working.

Increasing speed of processing could be self financing given possible savings on monthly cost of accommodation.

Seems like a key strategic focus for ministerial attention?

Perhaps more than a couple of plane loads of people being sent abroad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: stocks and flows

It's simple, if no cases are being processed, then nobody is being given asylum, so the government and the red-tops can crow that the 'number of asylum seekers is dropping'. (Whilst their mates get to bill the taxpayer for housing people whose cases are still stuck in limbo.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: stocks and flows

>It's simple, if no cases are being processed, then nobody is being given asylum, so the government and the red-tops can crow that the 'number of asylum seekers is dropping'. (Whilst their mates get to bill the taxpayer for housing people whose cases are still stuck in limbo.)

It also allows them to shout about how many people are stuck in limbo and say "Stop the boats" at any opportunity because it gets them some votes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: so the government and the red-tops can crow that the 'number of asylum seekers is dropping'

They want the number of asylum seekers to look unmanageable. They've fucked the economy and our children are destitute. They need an "other" to blame for all the problems they've created. Small boats carrying asylum seekers aren't the reason our schools are crumbling. Small boats carrying asylum seekers aren't the reason our kids are hungry, dirty and ill.

The current Conservative government and it's policies are to blame for these problems and for the massive number of unprocessed asylum claims.

If you think they want to get the numbers down you are delusional. They love that our population are stupid enough to hate brown people more than the government that is fucking them over.

[phuzz]

Re: so the government and the red-tops can crow that the 'number of asylum seekers is dropping'

It's the utter idiocy, the sheer wrong-headedness of the response that beggars belief. I mean, your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No let's blame the people with no power and no money and these immigrants who don't even have the vote, yeah it must be their fucking fault.

Iain (M.) Banks

[J.G.Harston]

Re: stocks and flows

No, if the processing stalls the number of aylum seekers *increases*. The number of people granted asylum, yes, drops to zero, but because of that the number of *applicants* gets longer and longer because nobody's being removed from the queueue.

If it is raining, and you block the drains, does the level of water in the back yard drop or rise?

[BenDwire]

I can see the headlines now ...

CID was maintained by French outsourcer Atos

Just wait until the Daily Fail (et al) get a sniff if this, proving our immigration chaos really has been the fault of the French all along!

/sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I can see the headlines now ...

From memory, Atos bought (a chunk of) Siemens, so the same outfit.

[jmch]

Legacy??

"the Casework Information Database (CID), which dates from the 1990s..."

So, built in MS Access 95???

[Captain Scarlet]

Re: Legacy??

I think you mean the Microsoft Jet Database Engine

[phuzz]

Re: Legacy??

MS Access has always used Jet as it's database engine. (Well, in 2007 they changed the name to "Access Database Engine", but it's still basically Jet.).

Mind you, a spin off from the original Jet is used as the database behind Active Directory, Sharepoint, Word, Exchange and Windows Search among other things.

If you work in IT, on average, you're never more than two metres away from a Jet database.

[matjaggard]

Re: Legacy??

Nah, Linux servers don't tend to run it, nor my MacBook.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Legacy??

Oracle Forms and Java

[Dr Who]

Case study

CID “started as a database containing basic details about asylum seekers and was initially expected to be an interim solution."

This is what they should teach Comp Sci and MBA students. How IT happens in the real world.

[Richard 12]

Re: Case study

Written by a secondary school kid on work experience.

Like many mission-critical VB6 applications.

I vaguely remember being that kid.

[matjaggard]

Re: Case study

We actually did do these kind of case studies. London ambulance service was one of them, I can't remember the others as I'm old now.

[cookieMonster]

Re: Case study

Was mentioned here last week:

There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary fix that works

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as applications are denied

it works as intended!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why it gave me the heebie-jeebies that, when I finally got my 'Indefinite' Leave To Remain somewhat recently, it had an expiration date at the end of 2024, and the enclosed letter explained that the Home Office will be putting a new system into place, that doesn't necessarily involve these little plastic BRP cards, and it will definitely, absolutely be in place by then, and so they're slapping this expiration date on there, leaving me very much wondering where I'll be left when–I mean, if–the new system isn't in place by then, and this bit of plastic still has that date indelibly stamped across it. It'll be oh so much fun if/when I come back from out of the country after that, until the mysterious new system is in place, I'm sure.

[Aladdin Sane]

Brave of you to assume the border checks are working

[J.G.Harston]

Nothing describes British government procedures better than an expirable indefinite status.

[Tron]

They wrote off £347,000,000 of public money...

...but nobody went to prison? I'm in the wrong business.

quote: CID was maintained by French outsourcer Atos at a cost of around £4.7 million a year.

So they are paying the French to stop them coming and for the software to deal with them when they do? The French have this Brexit bonus stuff nailed.

Was it built on HyperCard? Come on, you can tell us, we won't snitch. We're all in it together etc. And it was our money.

[Anonymous Coward]

VB6 to VB.NET

Whilst doing some other work for a company, came across a tool that had been written in VB6. It played an important small part in the company's processes and was reaching the point where they had to stop its life support in the form of EOL Windows XP.

They'd run it passed Microsoft consultants who said it'll need a rewrite and take 2 people 3-4 months...

The problem was the budget couldn't accommodate that.

I was asked to give an opinion. Had a look at the source. Hmm, quite well structured for a VB program. Tried the VB.NET import tool. Not entirely successful, but I had a spark of inspiration on how to bridge the gap.

In the end, 2 of us migrated it to VB.NET in 3 weeks, plus a week's effort for testing.

The migration gap was bridged by writing a tool for it, that took 2 days at the start

[SuperGeek]

what a surprise....not!

The UK Gov are a laughing stock.

Smart Meter deadline: Overzealous, missed and over budget.

Grenfell cladding fiasco: Still a joke and not corrected across the UK.

Electric Cars and Heat Pumps: Way overzealous and probably going to be out by 20 years!!

This isn't mentioning all the other crap they have denied/missed. And now we have the school roof nonsense. They'll narcissist their way out of that too!!

[Mooseman]

Re: what a surprise....not!

"They'll narcissist their way out of that too!!"

They will follow the standard (modern) tory policy of obfuscation, blame shifting and demonising others. They can no longer blame the EU (although they will of course try to) so now it's Labour, lefty lawyers, activists (whatever that means) and immigrants themselves. For a party made up heavily (at the top echelons) of the children of migrants it's both comical and depressing, almost as much as the number of people who appear to lap this crud up.

[Anonymous Coward]

How did the French cause this?

And what simple solution is there to it?

[J.G.Harston]

Re: How did the French cause this?

Nuke it from orbit. Only way to make sure.

[Citizen of Nowhere]

Working at pace

A Home Office official told The Reg the department was still "working at pace to decommission CID"

Shame that pace is a snail's pace...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just saying

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/18/immigration.immigrationpolicy