The Immigration Department has been developing “projecting systematic” technology that would evaluate applications in a way that’s similar to the work performed by officials today.
Andrew Griffith, retired director general of the Immigration Department, believes that if Canada uses automated immigration processing, there should be an oversight body to monitor decisions. (ANDREW GRIFFITH)
Since 2014, the Immigration Department has been developing what’s known as a “predictive analytics” system, which would evaluate applications in a way that’s similar to the work performed by officials today.
The plan is a part of the government’s modernization of a system plagued by backlogs and delays. It is to use the technology to identify the merits of an immigration application, spot potential red flags for fraud and weigh all these factors to recommend whether an applicant should be accepted or refused.
At the moment, the focus of the project is on building processes that would distinguish between high-risk and low-risk applications, immigration officials said.
Predictive analytics models are created by analyzing thousands of past applications and their outcomes. This allows the computer to ‘learn’ by detecting patterns in the data, in a manner analogous to how officers learn through the experience of processing applications.
“The goal is to improve client service and increase operational efficiency by reducing processing times while strengthening program integrity.”
The project was approved by the former Conservative government cabinet in February 2013. Wemp said there is no firm timeline on when automated decisions might be a viable option.
Authorities are trying to ensure the accuracy of decisions; models undergo extensive testing prior to being used. Once in service, quality assurance will be performed continually to make sure that model predictions are accurate.
“The novelty of the technology and the importance of getting it right make it imperative not to rush this project.”
“This is the greatest change in immigration processing since the Internet. What requires weeks if not months to process would only take days with the new system. There are going to be cascades of savings in time and money,” said immigration lawyer and policy analyst Richard Kurland.
“A lot of countries have used predictive analytics as a tool but not for immigration processing. Canada Revenue Agency also uses the techniques to identify red flags. It uses artificial intelligence. It is decision-making by machines. The dividends of this exercise are huge.”
The Immigration Department’s Wemp, however, said the department’s plans shouldn’t be classified as artificial intelligence because a predictive model cannot exercise judgment in the same way as a human and officers will always remain central to the process.
“We would be able to catch abnormalities in real time, which would then help us to identify fraud and threats more quickly,” noted Wemp. “Some immigration programs are better suited for predictive analytics than others. The department pictures a phased approach, one program at a time.”
Calling the government’s move evolution rather than revolution, Andrew Griffith, a retired director general of the Immigration Department, said applying the technology to immigration processing is a big deal for the public mostly because of border security concerns.
“The more you can bring the government to the 21st century, the better. But we should be using the tools intelligently and efficiently. The challenge is not to embed biases into the system and create extra barriers for applicants,” said Griffith, adding that an oversight body is warranted to constantly monitor the automated decisions.
McMaster University professor Vic Satzewich, author of a research on decision making by immigration officers, agreed.
“My concern is how they are going to formulate this operation coincide with the different factors officers use in weighing their decisions for each program. There are no real formulas they use,” said Satzewich.
“We cannot ignore the fact that two officers look at an application in different ways. A machine is going to miss things that an officer picks up. I still feel better to have an officer look at every immigration file. Public confidence is important. If Canadians lose confidence in the system, their support for immigration goes down.”
Immigration officials declare that no job losses are anticipated. Officers who are no longer working on low-risk applications would be reassigned to “higher value-added activities” such as reducing backlogs elsewhere.
Wemp did not reveal the budget for this project, but said the department has received “modest amounts of funding” to develop proofs of theory by a small team of analysts and no major informational technology investments have been made.
