£40m deal for secure IT for immigration

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 that will deliver timely and legally-compliant intelligence through the integrated, improved and expanded use of IT, says 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, including issues such as illegal working, the National Intelligence Model and legislative issues around intelligence handling,' said a spokeswoman for IND.

'The intelligence is confidential but it needs to be linked across the whole of IND so operations can be carried out in a timely and effective manner,' she said.

Mycroft will provide the necessary infrastructure including highly-secure workstations, servers and connection to the government's GSI network to support exchange of confidential emails with other agencies and departments.

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