Windows 7 migration underway at Immigration Department

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) is ditching XP in favour of Windows 7 to improve staff collaboration.

According to tender documents, the upgrade will modernise the department's IT environment and enable staff collaboration across multiple locations.

“The focus is to ensure the department has a contemporary desktop environment that supports collaboration across physical locations," the documents read. "The department will also be upgrading its existing infrastructure to support virtualisation."

In addition, the department will also take up Microsoft Office 2010 and plans to upgrade security software Symantec End Point Protection antivirus to version 11 as well as its servers to Microsoft Server 2008.

DIAC will also migrate to the latest Microsoft system centre configuration manager and expects the migration to be completed in June 2011.

The system overhaul is part of an ongoing software support deal handled by Unisys which began in June 2007.

The decision follows moves in November 2010 by the department to electronic-only visa and citizenship as part of its Systems for People Transformation program.

Annually, DIAC receives approximately 4.54 million application lodgements, broken down into electronic travel authority applications (49 per cent), paper visa applications (32 per cent) and online electronic visa applications (19 per cent).

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