Home Office wastes £347m on botched IT scheme

Immigration Case Work programme delivered 'significantly less than planned' before it was scrapped

The government has frittered away £347m of public cash on an IT scheme designed to improve workflow across its asylum and immigration agencies.

Back in 2006, a Home Office IT review said an electronic case-work system was needed, which led to the launch of the Immigration Case Work (ICW) scheme in 2010. The programme was designed to bring together all case-work interactions to give staff a single view of each applicant instead of relying on separate files and paperwork.

"ICW was expected to replace both the legacy Casework Information Database (CID) and 20 different IT and some paper-based systems by March 2014," states a National Audit Office report into reform of the UK border and immigration system. "It consisted of three main components: encompassing applications, decisions and a search facility."

But delays and problems with the programme meant all three of the main objectives were only ever delivered for those applying for student visas.

The scheme was eventually binned in August last year after delivering "significantly less than planned", despite racking up a whopping £347m in costs.

But the Home Office has another scheme up its sleeve which it insists will have a more agile approach.

"A new Immigration Platform Technologies programme is replacing ICW and is trialling an agile approach, focusing on incremental improvements," it said. "It still has far to go to have a significant impact and will cost £209m over four years."