Post
by littlerr » Thu Apr 25, 2019 11:28 am
To be fair, the plan was actually only put forward in October 2018, so it's merely 6 months from the publication of the plan.
It is a high level plan without any concrete details. The only thing regarding citizenship applications is "legal actions in Citizenship cases to be centralised in the existing LSSU".
They are going to assess which forms can be moved to online platform. Citizenship applications are relatively lower priority compared to GNIB registrations and those under free movement directive.
As an IT professional, I fully understand the challenges to integrate different systems into one. Yes in theory you can link a person's data in all different systems using a single identifier, but in reality that won't exist. Only non-EU nationals over 18 will have a GNIB number. For other people, there really isn't one. You can argue that passport number or the Public Service Card may be used as an identifier, but passport numbers can change and a person can have dual citizenship, while rolling out Public Service Card has met with enormous obstacles in terms of privacy concerns.
Then, you have the most realistic obstacle - money. Implementing a new system costs money. A lot of money. Integrating different systems costs even more money. And these integration attempts often fail at the initial assessment stage - by then you will have already spent quite a lot of money. DOJ will need a very solid reason in the parliament as to why they need taxpayers' money on this instead of on healthcare etc.
But yeah I don't understand why they don't have some basic online features, like online submission and online tracking. These should be rather straightforward and they don't cost a fortune to implement. Maybe it's just because they are not a priority compared to other applications...
One interesting point to take from the plan is: "The role of INIS has extended to encompass Border Management and Registration services exacerbating existing challenges. The IT system that supports these services, GNIB-IS, is outdated. Support for the operating system has not been available since 2008."
As a country that advertises its investment on ICT sector post financial crisis, this is just ridiculous.