Plans to streamline the process have now been sent back to the drawing board
The digitisation of Bermuda’s work permit application process has been put on hold after the system failed to operate as intended. The immigration automation digitisation project was designed to speed up the process for work permit applications and improve the overall efficiency of the system.
The digitisation project has been in development for several years. In the 2021 Speech from the Throne, the Government announced plans to automate immigration application processes and Jason Hayward, the Minister of Economy and Labour, estimated that Phase 1 of the project would launch in March 2022.
The failure of the system has set back the Immigration Department’s plans, announced in March 2023, that work permit applications, which on average took two or three months to be processed, would be dealt with in less than three weeks.
Leslie Robinson, the Junior Minister of Economy and Labour, said the Microsoft Dynamics System, which had been purchased for almost $112,000, did not satisfy the expectation for full automation of all applications processed by the Department of Immigration. It is now expected that the system will be completely overhauled and no new timeframe for when the project will be implemented has been provided.
