Can IBM Meet Customs and Immigration Merger Deadline?

The ABC has reported[1] that IBM looks increasingly unlikely to hit its October 31 deadline and there are growing fears in the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) about the rising risk of a system failure, with an unresolved industrial dispute dragging on and the Christmas holiday season looming.

The half-billion dollar contract is just one of many IBM has with the Federal Government. Before Customs and Immigration merged in 2015, two companies had been delivering IT services separately – IBM for Customs; and CSC, another US information technology giant, for Immigration. CSC lost the bid for the combined tender and its contract was terminated 20 months early, with the new completion date being set at October 31 this year. That was to involve transferring enormous amounts of information between CSC-managed and IBM-managed data centres.

As that deadline approaches, fears have grown within the department that IBM is not ready and that the system might fail. An IT failure could have serious national security implications as the mainframe will manage Australia’s border controls, including red flagging terror suspects attempting to enter or leave the country.

The concerns come in the wake of other high profile computer woes: the census-night shutdown of ABS, which the Prime Minister blamed on IBM; the company’s involvement in a Canadian payroll scandal; the billion-dollar health payroll debacle in Queensland, after which the State Government banned its agencies from signing contracts with IBM.

Labor’s immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann said any problems involving IBM’s contract with the department would be deeply disturbing. He pointed to a Rand Corporation review of the merger between Immigration and Customs that said there was ‘an absence of a solid plan’ for executing the integration.

A solution might include IBM hiring CSC’s workforce. DIBP has said that it has a ‘robust risk management framework’ in place to address any potential risks that may arise from a large scale change to border systems. It says it has a long relationship with IBM, which has maintained a stable computing environment for critical border systems. IBM said the department was also responding on its behalf.