Major errors registered at the Home Office immigration database led to the wrongful listing of over 76,000 people with wrong names, photographs, or immigration status.
Home Office Immigration Database Errors Spark Concerns
Leaked internal files expose the scope of the Home Office's database disaster, which has recently been chastised for delays in immigration application processing, long lines at borders, and the distribution of faulty identity cards.
The Home Office has remained relatively mute on the database problems, referring to them vaguely as "IT issues." Ministers have disputed that Atlas, the instrument used by border officials and immigration police that runs on the defective database, has a "systemic" problem.
The issue, concerning "merged identities," in which two or more people's biographical and biometric facts were wrongly connected, prevents people from proving their eligibility to work, rent housing, or receive free NHS care.
According to government officials, the Information Commissioner's Office is conducting an inquiry to determine whether the incident reflects a data breach.
The Home Office wilfully compounded the situation in January when, following a year of planning, it modified the way the database connected individuals' records to increase precision for several million individuals.
According to an official record from the Guardian, “small but important downside […] a few thousand people in the database who (typically due to human error, had other people’s passport details recorded on their records. The trade-off here was deemed by the business [the Home Office] to be worth it, hence the approval to proceed.”
Information coming from the leaked documents indicated that data pertaining to over 76,000 people has been impacted.
David Neal, the recently dismissed border inspector, said the Guardian's disclosures looked to "confirm my previous fears that the Home Office's data is inexcusably awful." He has requested a swift, independent probe.
Understanding the Origins of the Database Inaccuracies
The database at the core of the issues is called the Person Centric Data Platform (PCDP), and it stores all migrant's encounters with British immigration systems across time, such as applications for visas, identification papers, and biometric information. It has the details of 177 million people and is part of a Home Office plan to fully digitise visa and immigration processes, which has resulted in costs of over £400 million since 2014.
PCDP records are uploaded into Atlas, a Home Office computer programme used by caseworkers and Border Force agents to access information about migrants, as well as a variety of online resources used by persons to verify their immigration status and rights.
Because of the merged identities issue, Border Force personnel who look up information using one person's passport number may see the name, photograph, or immigration status of another individual on their screen.
Meanwhile, people who log on to a Home Office portal to establish their eligibility to work or rent to employers and landlords could end up given the names and images of others, jeopardising their chances of finding work or accommodation.