The federal Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) yesterday signed a three-year, AU$200 million contract with IBM as part of the department's four-year Systems for People project.
The project, announced in the federal budget, follows the department's independent reviews of the poor record-keeping which led to the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez. The project will give DIMA staff a single view of all dealings with its external immigration clients, including document verification, visa processing and biometrics services.
In June DIMA awarded a consortium led by IBM an AU$495 million contract to implement the project, with yesterday's deal forming a large chunk of those funds. IBM also has a contract with DIMA designed to kick-start work on Systems for People while longer term negotiations were finalised; the value of that deal was not to exceed AU$16.5 million over its life from 26 June to 30 September this year.
Confirming yesterday's deal in a statement issued this morning, a DIMA spokesperson said the contract would be performance-based, "including incentives linked to ongoing and future work opportunities".
"IBM and its subcontractors will provide business transformation, systems integration and application development expertise, as well as hardware and software technologies," the statement added.
"IBM has already started working with the department, with more than 150 staff working alongside departmental staff in multi-disciplinary teams to develop and deliver the first major systems upgrade, due to occur in April."
DIMA is also on the verge of signing an extensive four-year desktop outsourcing deal worth around AU$100 million, with contenders including IBM, Unisys, Getronics and incumbent provider CSC. The department's IT decision making body was likely to discuss that deal in a meeting yesterday. "Any decisions out of this meeting will be made public shortly," said the DIMA spokesperson.
