Failed IT project: Greens question what would have happened if it had continued

A Green MP has raised concerns about what would have happened if a failed IT project had gone ahead, given New Zealand's links to a secretive migration pact.

Speaking during an urgent debate on the matter last night, the Greens' immigration spokesperson Ricardo Menendez March pointed to cybersecurity risks raised during the project.

The Biometric Capability Upgrade was scrapped last year having cost more than $30 million over about seven years, and the Public Service Commission has ordered an investigation by Michael Heron KC.

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford revealed the botched project's demise last week at a scrutiny hearing, saying she was furious over officials deliberately withholding information from her and former Labour ministers.

A report on the project had accused officials of misleading ministers and using 'creative accounting' to hide the project from Cabinet, and it was claimed some staff were moved off the project if they expressed doubts.

March was first to speak in the debate and said one aspect that had not received enough public attention was the project was aimed at aligning New Zealand's immigration system closer with 'Migration 5' partners.

He quoted from the report on the IT project - which was being handled by third-party company NEC on behalf of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) - to raise concerns over a lack of cybersecurity protections.

"There were multiple attempts to reach agreement with NEC in resolving these vulnerabilities, and the report goes on to say that NEC was often slow or unwilling to address concerns raised by MBIE," he said.

He pointed to ministers and MPs being "kept in the dark" over the matter, questioning what would have happened if the project had continued ahead.

"The biometric information that is supposed to be collected through this upgrade would have included information on refugees and asylum seekers or immigrants, and in the case of the former, we're talking about groups of people who would have been fleeing potentially life-threatening situations."

He asserted that the upgrade had aimed to "better align us to our other migration five pack nations".

"We have very little oversight over whether that biometric information is used adequately by the likes of the United States, who currently have a government that is very much targeting migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees," he said.

The secretive Migration 5 pact links the Five Eyes partners - the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - with 36 'Anglosphere' networks to share data about travellers.

Based in New Zealand, the pact in 2024 was estimated to share data from 8 million border movements per year.

He asked Stanford to explain whether New Zealand would continue to be part of the Migration 5 pact.

The minister largely brushed this off as "wild assertions... that are somewhat outside of the scope".

"They are for the future. I'm going to stick to the facts and that we know so far," she said.

Questions over initial signoff - Stanford

Stanford laid out the history of the project, raising questions about the thresholds at which ministers would be required to have oversight.

"The original business case in 2019 with a whole of life cost of $19.49m - as far as I can see, with all the information that I've asked for - was not signed off by ministers," she said.

"Now at the time, as far as I understand, $15 million was the amount needed to have signoff by ministers - this was $19.49m and I can't see any signout by ministers."

The question that begs is how it came to be that a project which at the start exceeded the threshold for consideration by ministers managed to evade their oversight.

Either possibility - that it may be the fault of public servants, who have been facing criticism from their government masters who are looking to cut jobs, or the fault of former Labour ministers for lax oversight - would be a political win for Stanford and government alike.

Subsequent comments make clear the minister is keeping that latter option open.

"How were ministers misled, if they were, and the information they were given; and importantly the information that they were not given - because, as I can see, over the last six years of this, ministers were given scant information."

The minister also said the business case for the project had from day 1 not been up to standard, and pointed to officials in 2020 deciding to change the scope from an off-the-shelf technology upgrade to something much bigger, "described as a workflow programme ... not something that had been done before by this particular vendor".

She pointed to what appeared to be the first paper on the project that went to ministers being in November 2021 which asked them to note the cost has increased above $30m.

Privilege and outrage

Speaking after Stanford, Labour's immigration spokesperson Phil Twyford was similarly outraged.

"What I got can best be described as flannel. A long answer that, in my view, is dissembling. No facts that we would now recognise about the project were delivered.

"We now know that the project had been completely disestablished at the very time the officials were answering those questions, they had already apologised to a minister who was on the warpath about this project because of the dissembling and the manipulation and the lying by omission."

Speaking under the legal protection of Parliamentary privilege, he said he believed Blakely and McDonald "misled Parliament".

"They came along to this place to appear at hearings that have the very purpose of scrutinizing the government's activities through the annual review, and they dissembled."

This prompted a warning from the Speaker, Gerry Brownlee, that such specific allegations "might be better tested in another forum".

NZ First leader Winston Peters - who previously suggested public servants should be sacked and "put in prison" if they misled ministers - on Tuesday had softened his language.

He and others called for more immediate action on Blakely and McDonald's committee appearance in March, but said it was not for him to make determinations on.

However, he indicated that if officials had lied to Parliament it could amount to fraud, and criminal prosecution.