PRIVACY IMPACT ASSESSMENT (PIA) SUMMARY
INTEGRATED CASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ICMS)
The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) is Canada's largest independent administrative tribunal. Its mission, on behalf of Canadians, is to resolve immigration and refugee cases efficiently, fairly and in accordance with the law.
As part of the IRB's initiative to increase its efficiency and ensure standardization in processing refugee claims across the regions, the ICMS project received Treasury Board approval in May 2003. The ICMS project is meant to automate the currently manual processes of the IRB's three tribunals (the Immigration Division, the Immigration Appeal Division and the Refugee Protection Division).
The ICMS project for the Refugee Protection Division has been divided into four releases:
- Release 1: automation of triage work
- Release 2: automation of research request
- Release 3: electronic submission of Personal Information Form
- Release 4: builds on the previous releases (2 and 3) and addresses many of the concerns that were noted therein
The scope of this assessment covers ICMS Stage 1 Release 4, where functionality and data collection from the previous releases is fully integrated. Release 4 collects no additional personal information over and above what was already being collected by the IRB as part of its operating program. This PIA is to verify that there are no new risks.
A PIA for ICMS Release 4 was completed on March 15, 2007. The scope of this detailed assessment covers stage 1 of the automation of the refugee protection program and includes comments from a PIA review conducted by the Privacy Commissioner on November 7, 2006, regarding releases 2 and 3.
The results of the assessment demonstrated a Privacy Act compliance level of 96%, including perfect scores on the following Privacy Act principles: collection, consent, use of personal information, disclosure and disposition, accuracy, safeguards and individual access. The assessment of the accountability and openness principles demonstrated low residual risk with compliance levels of 8 out of 9 and 4 out of 5 respectively. Finally, the assessment recognized room for improvement on the principle of challenging compliance, which received a compliance level of 2 out of 4 and residual risk level of medium.
The ICMS application will continue to evolve to meet business requirements and industry standards through various updates and releases. The IRB is committed to its adherence to the Privacy Act and in the future will continue to assess its ICMS compliance with the Privacy Act and its regulations and update the PIA periodically.