With the work permits data being revealed Director of Immigration William Pratt announced that the department has signed an 18.5 million dollar contract with the government in order to acquire a new integrated immigration management system and how it will greatly benefit Bahamians throughout the world.

“The new electronic data system will readily provide the Bahamian government and the department of statistics with data that will help the government in planning, particularly when they are dealing with scholarships to Bahamians to study abroad,” Mr. Pratt said.

Officer Ashton Greenslade, one of the officers employed as a part of the immigration department’s IT unit further explained the benefits of the new system.

“As a part of the new Immigration ID Management system we are looking to improve the efficiency of our border control process and we are going to begin digitizing all of our electronic files.

“The public has complained and said the system is kind of slow as far as the application process but in regards to the new system what this will do is improve the accuracy and data collection that we do.

“It will allow us to have statistical data more readily available in terms of work permits and it will be broken down into various categories so it can be more granular in terms of information relative to the statistics,” Mr. Greenslade said.

Mr. Pratt said the system has already started to be implemented but is expected to be completely phased in by July of next year.