Upgrade to New Zealand’s immigration system postponed

A key improvement to New Zealand’s immigration identity system, known as the Biometric Capability Upgrade (BCU), will be delayed for six months, boosting its cost to an additional NZ$1.3 million (US$788,400).

Immigration New Zealand (INZ) decided to postpone this month’s launch of the NZ$35 million ($21.2 million) upgrade to April as bugs were still being found during testing. Another reason for the delay is the upcoming summer season which will bring more work for visa authorities, the agency announced on Wednesday.

“So as we get into November, as you appreciate it’s peak season and we wanted to ensure that the product that we have was operating properly and we weren’t forced into a window where we were able to resolve the bugs and the defects and then have to go live shortly after that,” Immigration New Zealand’s spokesperson Michael Alp told Radio New Zealand.

The Biometric Capability Upgrade (BCU) was designed to improve automated checks on travelers’ biometric information, including photographs. At present, around 15 percent of checks have to be carried out manually because the system cannot accurately match a photo to an existing immigration record.

The upgrade involves several companies, including NEC New Zealand as the lead vendor and Datacom which provides system support services. Argonaut is in charge of the Secure Real-Time Platform (SRTP), which allows the sharing of data with other countries.

An independent review has already warned New Zealand’s government that the upgrade would not be ready on time, according to the media report. The project’s costs have also escalated over the years, from NZ$19.5 million ($11.8 million) to NZ$35 million over the past years, according to a briefing from Immigration New Zealand to Standford. The briefing, published in Match, indicated that the project’s cost may need to rise once more to NZ$40 million ($24.2 million).

The country’s current system IDme will be retired next year. Authorities also plan to retire parts of the Immigration Global Management System that provide identity matching and update the NEC identity engine to provide that functionality.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  border security  |  Datacom  |  identity management  |  immigration  |  NEC  |  NEC New Zealand  |  New Zealand