Home Office staff still leaning on 25-year-old asylum case management system

Despite completing its rollout of a new case management system, Home Office caseworkers are still referring back to data in a 25-year-old legacy system when processing asylum claims, according to a public spending watchdog. The National Audit Office (NAO) also found problems with the data input on the newly implemented system …

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

The major part of dealing with immigrants is paperwork, not how many turn up on the Kent coast.

Similar problems with the British justice system, the reason offenders are not promptly dealt with is the time it takes to get them before a judge and jury. Years of cutting justice department budgets because some of the money might be spent on lawyers providing legal representation so the accused are processed fairly and equitably by the legal system or providing prisoners with education and training so they are less likely to reoffend, has left the system short of capacity.

Justice delayed is injustice to victims, inefficient and diminishes the deterrence of "stiff sentencing" so beloved of the populist approach to criminal theory

[wolfetone]

Re: Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

Go away with your common sense attitude!

It's damaging to the sensibilities of those who keep kissing Farage's arse.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

What sensibilities?

[wolfetone]

Re: Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

.... good point!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

Yes, "immigrant" jabs are pure deflection to distract from the fact the corporations connected to the "boats" industry are making billions.

There is absolutely no incentive to do something about it, because people are making serious money off of it.

Of course at the expense of tax payers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

The major part of dealing with immigrants is paperwork, not how many turn up on the Kent coast.

Yes, throw enough lawyers at any problem and you'll always be swamped in paperwork.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

> The major part of dealing with immigrants is paperwork

We could solve the paperwork problem by doing away with the concept, "immigrant".

[TDog]

Re: Remember this when someone starts spouting off about immigrants

My daughter's tier one apeal for PIP was a rehearing directed to be held because the previous tribunal had made 3 substantive (i.e. enough that any one of them would have sufficed to invalidate the result) errors of law in a 4 page document. Ignoring the gross inefficiencies there, the situation was compounded as the higher tribunal had directed that all three members of the panel (chair, social / lay person and doctor) were to be recused.

It was a phone hearing; at 9.45 for a 10.00 hearing it was cancelled as, I was informed, "We're sorry but the judge and the doctor are the two who have been recused and can't sit in this case."

This was an administrative error. No compensation was offered for my wife having to cancel 20 patients at very short notice thereby suffering a substantial loss of income. No apology to the patients who undoubtedly blamed my wife. No offer for the stress caused to my daughter who had had 4 tribunals already.

If the buggers can't even manage simple things like following clear instructions from a higher court, what chance does any system requiring input have? Remember the citizens of this country have rights too and let's deal with them before potential citizens, refugees, criminals or whatever who have elected to come to this country. We were born here, if we can't even treat ourselves fairly I have little hope for any one else.

[Doctor Syntax]

John Reid was right. Decades later he's still right.

[elsergiovolador]

Too many

It's like there is too many gravy trains and the station is too small to fit them all.

[Primus Secundus Tertius]

Spreadsheets

Whingeing about a computer system that is 25 years old is pathetic. All that is needed is a spreadsheet or two. Something anyone can do, except probably a civil service arts graduate.

[Korev]

Re: Spreadsheets

If it's 25 years old, then Excel would only have been able to hold 64k rows

[IGotOut]

Re: Spreadsheets

Having an ex who worked in Social Services dealing with Asylum seekers, you are yet another commentard that doesn't have a fucking clue what they are on about.

Not only did they have to deal with a clunky IT system, but also mountains of physical paperwork.

[Will Godfrey]

What a surprise!

A major government software project is behind schedule, overpriced and not fit for purpose. Never expected that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What a surprise!

They only had two requirements, even!

1. It has to be *exactly* the same as the old system, right down to the system's internal floating-point representation and rounding!

2. It has to free them from maintaining COBOL!

why can't anyone *ever* fulfill the promise of such a system? Sigh..

Tbh, maybe a first-step in this direction would be building a C compiler that implements floating point and various other things as they existed and were used on COBOL systems. That could solve one of the bigger(?) problems without requiring the language, but who knows what other problems these developers have hit along the way - and whether or not compiler changes could alleviate those.

[ComicalEngineer]

Re: What a surprise!

Remember folks, the people responsible for this omnishambles will almost certainly be in the frame for the government electronic ID project.

[Mike 137]

Sadly, not unique

A few years back, on a contract with an NHS trust, I found a hospital admissions system running on two separate computers (side by side under the same desk) that required the users to shuffle their chairs back and forth between two screens. I suggested (as a minimum) a KVM switch, but IT support hadn't heard of such a device. The problem is often not so much "legacy" as "inadequate".

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no votes in immigration processing, prisons or mental health

No vote potential

No cash

No change

[harrys]

once the recession kicks in

IT pro's will be rushing to these jobs as a safe haven and things will improve big time

But above all you wont have to hide your occupation from professional fellow IT bro's, they will look at you with envy instead of an "uncomfortable silence" :)

Recession.... a natural process that even fiat currencies can't beat.. and needed at least once in every generation to bring a dose of reality to hubristic big heads

What did that scottish idiot say ...... "were gonna lick boom and bust", hubristic arse wipe.... should have ahipped him off to silicon valley with all the other arse wipes there :)

[Tubz]

and these clowns want to handle an ID system of 70m+ people, with even more valuable personal data ?