The Department of Immigration and Border Protection of Australia is moving forward with its plan to make a complete change to the customs and border process for travellers coming in and departing from the country with the introduction of a new solution. This, according to a report made by the IT News for Australian Business.
In July of last year, what used to be the Customs service, which has now been made part of the Department of Immigration, made an announcement that it was hoping for the implementation of a new border clearance system so a faster process can be provided in processing legitimate travellers, as well as more effectively flag risks.
The system that was being proposed would be able to determine if a traveller can be allowed to enter or leave Australia through its various air and sea ports.
Should the rollout become a success, the department would make the expansion of the system in the near future so that clearance processing for cargo and vessels can be provided as well.
In 2014, 2 separate proofs-of-concept were assumed by the department to try out a range of biometric technologies and methods of implementation to go with Unisys and Accenture.
The PoC’s were made to run for 4 months and lasted past March of this year, and it was proven to be successful in assisting the agency put together a business case for the new capability.
The test was able to help in establishing the very same specifications for the current approach of the agency to market for a system integration partner so the solution can be implemented and rolled out, which was then published the past week.
According to a spokesperson for the immigration department, Accenture and Unisys will both be able to make a bid for the contract.
Identity resolution and master data management, integrated process automation and case management, planning and scheduling, as well as a console for the remote monitoring and controlling of the biometric e-gates, will all be made possible with the new border clearance system.
The present 3 legacy system of the agency, including its passenger analysis, clearance and evaluation system (or PACE), the CAPS resource scheduler, as well as its BAGS system for recording bag check results will all be essentially replaced by the new platform.
Its integration with the existing Quintiq software for planning and scheduling, and the Pega software for case and process management of the agency, the border clearance platform will have the ability to match the personal and biometric information of the passenger against the department risk profiling and international watchlists the moment they book a ticket or lodge an application for a travel visa to Australia.
They system will then be able to assign a risk profile to each of the travellers, a respective treatment plan will also be made to state which level of ease they can pass through the border clearance.
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection now has the power to access details from the airlines regarding passengers that leave the country before they even depart, as a result of a new bill that have already gone into effect earlier in July of this year.
The DIBP stated that it is hoping to secure a systems integration partner by December of next year for a completion date of March 2018.
It was previously reported that Mr Scott Morrison, the minister for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, just recently keynoted at the Biometrics Institute Asia Pacific Conference. He focused on the importance of biometrics, the future steps to be made for biometric immigration in the country, as well as the support and confidence for the technology.
Source: BiometricUpdate.com
