Immigration Department moves to outsource visa system to avoid cost blow-outs

By: Doug Dingwall

​The Immigration Department plans to hand over large parts of its visa application work to private players. Photo: Getty Images

Vast swathes of its visa system would gradually move to private companies in contracts valued together up to $9 billion over ten years, a cost burden that could be heaped partly on migrants and travellers through user charges. 


Immigration has briefed industry players in San Francisco, Singapore and Bangalore, and has also invited artificial intelligence and robotics companies to help it design a new visa system in a bid to automate more assessments, potentially with AI.


The department hopes the overhaul will prepare it for an expected 50 per cent surge in visa and citizenship applications by 2026, when numbers are predicted to top 13 million a year. 


Businesses already shoulder 20 per cent of the work in Immigration's visa system, but the department told private operators in a consultation paper applications had reached unprecedented numbers and it wanted to avoid cost blow-outs by involving them more. 


"This would enable the department's staff to focus on the more complex elements of the visa business," it said. 


"Doing so is expected to drive substantial financial and non-financial benefits for the Australian public, applicants, the government and the market."

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