Home Office

PublicTechnology reported on 17 April 2023 that the Home Office had signed a two-year £8.5 million contract with BJSS, effective from the start of that month, for the Identify and Prioritise Immigration Cases (IPIC) tool, which the Home Office developed to "prioritise immigration enforcement cases and provide officers with 'recommended interventions'". The article describes IPIC as "a software automation tool", says some enforcement units began using it about three years earlier and that several enforcement teams were using it, and says the Home Office did not answer questions about how it works. Privacy International, drawing on internal documents, wrote on 17 October 2024 that IPIC "automatically identifies and recommends migrants for particular immigration decisions or enforcement action" and is used across the immigration system, and that officials must explain a rejected recommendation but not an accepted one. Privacy International complained to the Information Commissioner's Office on 18 August 2025 about IPIC and the Electronic Monitoring Review Tool, alleging limited human involvement, a lack of meaningful information for the people affected and a failure to carry out a lawful data protection impact assessment; Computer Weekly has since reported that the ICO is "investigating claims" that the tools breach privacy law, and no outcome has been published. Open Rights Group's report "Automated Discrimination", covered on 27 October 2026, also names IPIC; responding on its use of AI in general, a Home Office spokesperson said AI "does not take the place of human decision-makers".