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Border Force to get operational app

31/05/17

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Two-year project to develop open source application based on using Activiti software

The Home Office is looking to develop an application to support Border Force officers in making decisions in the course of their operational duties.

It has posted a notice for support in a two-year project, valued at between £1 million and £3 million, to develop an application that will provide information from a range of sources along with a workflow function.

This has indicated that it has a preference for basing the application on open source and using Activiti business process management software as an enabling technology.

Among the requirements are that it should incorporate detailed operating procedures, which can be changed if necessary. The agency envisages that its officers will use the app at ports and other locations to make and record critical decisions.

It has already run a discovery phase of the project and been speaking with open source and commercial off the shelf software suppliers.

The aim of the development is to make officers more operationally effective, often in harsh climatic conditions, while also interacting with members of the public and trade.

It is part of the Border Force’s transformation programme, and comes four years after the agency took a hammering from the National Audit Office and Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee on the state of its IT. The latter said at the time that systems were inadequate and future plans unrealistic.

Picture adapted from image by the Home Office, uploaded by Opihuck,Open Government Licence v3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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