Draft:Asylum Case Information Database

The Asylum Case Information Database (ACID) or (CID) for short, was a government database used by the UK Home Office for management of asylum applications, as well as derivative rights applications. The database was introduced in 2000, originally for Asylum case-management, but in 2002 it was expanded to be used in non-asylum related extensions of stay within the United Kingdom. One year later, the database was tasked with managing port and enforcement casework. As of February 2024, the database is now mostly replaced by Magnet Forensics' 'Atlas' case administration system, costing the Home Office £71million.

Operation
The Asylum Case Information Database was supplied and maintained by French IT provider Atos; running on Oracle-based software (specifically Forms and Database) and was developed in Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET. It was estimated that the approximate yearly cost of maintaining the ACID alone was £4.7million. The system was used by an estimate of 15,000 trained users, from UK Visas and Immigration, Border Force, and Immigration Enforcement.

Controversy
On 14 March 2024, it was revealed that a separate database - the Person Centric Data Platform (PCDP) - contained major flaws with more than 76,000 people being listed as having incorrect personal details, photographs and immigration statuses. The PCDP was a type of data source fed into Atlas, ACID's replacement. It contains the records of 177 million people. It was reported that this was due to a conflict with data providers, or "merged identities". The situation was criticized by David Neal, the former Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, who described the system's data as "inexcusably awful".

Atlas was further criticized for the delay of application progress by caseworkers in UK Visas and Immigration, as well as delaying operations for Immigration Enforcement as information recorded in the system would disappear or go missing. It was revealed that ACID was not yet entirely out of service, which further frustrated Home Office caseworkers as it meant entering data onto both ACID and Atlas simultaneously.