Process mining promises faster immigration administration at UDI

Client Challenge: UDI wanted to find new ways of increasing the speed of its asylum application processing and wanted to understand the potential of process mining within this field

Solution: Working with Capgemini, UDI launched a proof of value project and demonstrated that process mining offered a substantial, scalable opportunity for improvement through its immigration processes

Benefits:

• 20 million NOK of potential annual value
• Proof of efficiency gains in asylum process
• Greater flexibility, insight, and scalability of process improvement efforts

Striving to make immigration processing rapid and easy

As tensions have grown worldwide, immigration has become an increasingly important issue, one with which every country must prepare to grapple. As refugees and other immigrants seek safety and new homes, governments must be able to move faster in order to act in the best interests of their citizens as well as the vulnerable people at their doorstep. In Norway, the Department of Immigration (UDI) is responsible for managing asylum requests as well as housing the applicants throughout the entirety of the process.

This includes the Dublin procedure, which determines the country that is responsible for the asylum seeker. These kinds of processes can be long and stressful for all involved and so UDI has made the pursuit of the most efficient processing possible of asylum applications its continuing mission. Though the department had achieved substantial success previously and even received an award for shortening process lead times by 100 days, this work proved difficult to replicate and scale.

UDI began a search for tools and methodologies that could help it improve. Upon identifying the potential of process mining, the department selected Capgemini to help run a proof of value project to determine the impact this data-based approach could have.

Demonstrating the value of process mining

At the heart of the project was the need to determine whether UDI data was suitable for process mining, how much improvement could be achieved, and how much it could improve daily operations. To answer these questions, Capgemini set up and managed a series of workshops that involved a representative cross section of UDI, including business leaders, process analysts, and case workers from multiple departments.

Working with Celonis process mining software, UDI and Capgemini established a data model based on digital traces from UDI’s asylumn case management system. The partners then worked through the Dublin procedure using Celonis process mining to identify improvement potential. Building upon the work done during the workshops, UDI and Capgemini studied how process mining impacted all levels of the organization, including top management, the operational excellence team, and case workers.

Building a foundation for the future

Following the project, UDI and Capgemini demonstrated that there was in fact significant opportunity for process mining to deliver substantial improvements to asylum application processes. The top three use cases alone demonstrated potential annual business value for UDI of more than 20 million NOK. In addition, as part of this project, Capgemini helped UDI establish an operating model to rapidly roll out process mining as part of daily operations, continuously build on previous work, and operationalize findings.

With a solid understanding of the potential of process mining in hand, UDI is now equipped to pursue a broader implementation that will make immigration applications within Norway more efficient and less stressful. In the spirit of innovation and a determination to make asylum processes as simple as possible, UDI is ready to take the next step towards the future of immigration.