The Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) is spending £40m on a secure IT system to help meet political commitments on immigration and asylum.

The Mycroft system will be developed and maintained over five years by supplier Serco Justice.

It will provide a secure, networked intelligence system to deliver timely and legally compliant intelligence through the integrated, improved and expanded use of IT, according to the IND.

"The main driver behind the programme is the pressure on ministers to deliver on a number of high profile public commitments regarding asylum and immigration," said an IND spokeswoman.

"These include issues such as illegal working, the National Intelligence Model and legislative issues around intelligence handling.

"The intelligence is confidential but needs to be linked across the whole of the IND so that operations can be carried out in a timely and effective manner."

Mycroft will provide the necessary infrastructure including highly secure workstations and servers, and connection to the Government Secure Intranet to support the exchange of confidential emails with other agencies and departments.

The first Mycroft users are scheduled to go live in December before a full roll out across the UK. It will be used for all IND intelligence-led work.