After a CBC investigation revealed that thousands of immigration applications were assigned to the identities and temporary codes of hundreds of former employees, the federal government is conducting a major investigation and cleaning up its global application system to ensure nothing is “forgotten,” CBC News has learned.
Now, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) told CBC News it has ended the long-standing practice of using inactive staff IDs as a virtual repository for application documents “to ensure that documents do not fall through the cracks.”
On Dec. 12, 2022, CBC first reported that IRCC was assigning tens of thousands of applications to “inactive users” in its Global Case Management System (GCMS), which is used to process citizenship and immigration applications.
In February of that year, 59,456 “open, pending or reopened” applications were assigned to 779 codes representing a mix of placeholders and former employees, some of whom had last logged in to process their files more than a decade ago, according to the data.
IRCC, which initially failed to respond to CBC in time for its deadline, explained that after the article was published, it had been using inactive user codes to sort and hold applications for the next stage of processing. IRCC also said the data obtained by CBC was only one example of a complex system.
New details emerge
Nearly two years after that story was published, and a year and a half after CBC requested the documents, IRCC finally released a Freedom of Information request with more detailed information.
At the time, officials denied that applications had ever been in “limb,” but emails obtained by CBC show that some applications relating to former employees were reassigned to current employees in the weeks after CBC’s report.
The concern is inactive users and potentially lost files.– IRCC internal email
Staff also seemed to have doubts about the efficiency of their company’s file management system.
“that[‘s] “While this is OK internally, we would like to avoid further scrutiny,” said an email from an IRCC employee who reported the use of these codes as a concern.
Pressed After CBC first broke the story, Congress “The allegation that documents are being held by officials who do not exist is clearly false,” then Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said.
At the technical briefing The footage was provided to CBC a few days later.IRCC officials reiterated that the premise of the original article was “essentially false” and said the application had not been forgotten.
“No file will be left unattended at any stage of the process,” the official said by phone on Dec. 15, 2022.
But that same day, IRCC’s assistant secretary’s office issued a network-wide task to processing offices to review the list published by CBC, according to the email.
The senior advisor asked the team to ensure that all files assigned to inactive users had in fact been processed, and that it “still makes sense” to keep files assigned to those identities.
“The goal was to make sure all files were processed in the correct order and on track (and not forgotten because they remained assigned to a user ID that no one was monitoring),” the advisor later explained in a separate email.
“The concern is inactive users and potentially lost files,” another official explained to the team.
Reassigning files, “disabling” identities
Several teams reported that they had reassigned some applications and “deactivated” some dormant user IDs in the days following CBC’s report.
For example, IRCC’s Windsor, Ontario office found one outstanding citizenship application in early 2022 that was “allocated to a former employee.”
“This application has been reassigned to the current Level 2 decision maker,” the email said.
Hamilton-Niagara said one open case is “currently assigned to an active user.”
The Ottawa office said it would “update the list to remove employees who are no longer working for us” and that it would “focus on the five individuals identified in the report, but will also act aggressively against other leavers in 2022.”
In another office, staff were “reviewing and correcting” files.
“All assignments to inactive user IDs have been reviewed and reassigned,” they wrote. “We will process and reassign these in the coming weeks.”
Workers also found inconsistencies and reported several applications that appeared to have been canceled, “not properly closed” or incorrectly allocated.
“To me, that doesn’t make sense,” one senior adviser said, questioning why the files were “still sitting” in the Sydney, Nova Scotia, office but assigned to workers on a different team.
“What do we do about these user IDs?” asked another employee.
They also discovered several “ghost” applications.
“From a cursory look, it appears that many of these are ghost apps that have been left behind for various reasons, but we would like to review these apps to ensure that none have been lost for some reason,” the email said.
Staff Question System
IRCC staff and some leaders also questioned whether the file management system made sense, with one asking, “Why are we using old employee codes?”
IRCC’s director of IT operations responded, “While we cannot comment on why we are using old employee codes, we are confident that the information we received is accurate.”
However, some teams had already pointed out this issue as early as October 2022 and asked the GCMS team to create generic bins instead of using “personal codes” as placeholders.
“We need to pressure GCMS to create these codes and enable them for use,” a redacted portion of the November email said.
The staff member volunteered his or her own user ID as a workaround to ensure that the codes used as placeholder bins came from a “current” employee.
After CBC’s original article was published, the assistant director flagged previous email correspondence, suggesting “further intensive workload management.”
The senior adviser then suggested that IRCC undertake a “project” in 2023 to “remove everyone from inactive user IDs and switch to a generic bin to prevent these questions and confusion from arising again.”
Officials also questioned whether the IT team was “cleaning” the systems “regularly” — questions to which even the head of IT operations initially didn’t know the answers.
“we, [the operations team] “(If I remember correctly),” the IT official said in a Dec. 12, 2022 email. “I remember there being an audit a few years ago that involved this process. I’ve been checking my inbox.”
The operations person later said that I.T.[s] It indicates that a process is in place, but we cannot say for sure whether it is being adhered to.”
IRCC no longer uses inactive IDs
IRCC declined an interview request from CBC to discuss the new information.
The ministry said in an email that it transitioned to using a “universal ID” to streamline applications going through the processing system four months after CBC’s report — between April and May 2023.
IRCC said it plans to create 125 new generic IDs and add more as needed.
“All potentially inactive user IDs have been systematically reassigned to newly established general-purpose Responsibility Centre (RC) IDs,” IRCC said in a statement on Friday.
“This ensures that files don’t get overlooked if an officer is suddenly unavailable or resigns.”
Meanwhile, a permanent residency (PR) applicant interviewed for CBC’s initial article said he received his permanent residency just four months after the article was published.
“[It’s] “It was a little disappointing,” said Andrea Bothe, who was assigned code RA9519 at the time.
According to the email, RA9519 was one of seven IDs whose files were mistakenly listed as belonging to the Sydney (Nova Scotia) office and were subsequently forwarded to the correct team during review.
“We’re hopeful that this will lead to even better reforms, that we’ll be more proactive in solving these problems rather than reactive,” Boat said Thursday.
Jamie Liu, an immigration lawyer who has sounded the alarm about the opacity of IRCC’s system, said it was a good thing the department was looking into the files, even if it was in response to media attention.
“That being said, it would be great if the government were more transparent about what they’re doing… [latest] The information is [access to information] “It’s a request,” Liu said.
“There are real people behind these files,” Liu reminded the officials. “People’s lives are at risk. [their] About the future and plans.”
