The Hon Alan Tudge MP is currently acting Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs

​The Australian Government has today announced a broad new policy approach to the acquisition and delivery of workflow processing capability in the Home Affairs portfolio and other areas across government.

The Government will implement modern, easy to access, digital services for clients in line with its response to the Thodey Review of the Australian Public Service. This approach seeks integrated enterprise-scale workflow processing capability that could be utilised across the Commonwealth.

Key to this is recognising the efficiencies that can be generated from large-scale government investment in technology and the re-use of capability across government.

The Department of Home Affairs will conduct a market consultation process in the coming months seeking industry engagement and insights into the best way to deliver large-scale workflow processing capability for visa and citizenship applications and additionally, for Customs functions and personnel security clearances in the Home Affairs portfolio.

While current visa systems continue to function, they are out of date, and processing and decision making in many cases is still undertaken manually, supported by old technology and limited risk assessment capabilities.

With this approach, systems and capabilities will be well-placed to meet future demands, enabling the Government to respond to emerging global threats and improving service delivery across government.

The work the Department has done in recent years to modernise its visa service delivery arrangements will be utilised and extended to other areas in developing and specifying the requirements for this much broader capability, on which visa processing will still be the first product delivered.

The Department of Home Affairs has consequently terminated the Request for Tender process for its proposed Global Digital Platform.