AI Success Stories

ImmD Logo ImmD: Decision Support

hk immigration department - intelligent e-government decision support

Project Summary:

  • client: Hong Kong Immigration Department
  • application: e-Government automatic application assessment
  • AI technology:  business rules, data mining, machine learning, AI clustering

Introduction

Each year, Hong Kong citizens and visitors submit several million application forms to the Immigration Department to apply for a wide variety of documents ranging from right of adobe, travel documents, identity cards, work permits, to the registration of birth, death and marriage. Providing high quality service in a timely manner is a very important mission objective for the Immigration Department. By using a suite of AI technologies, we are able to streamline approval processes and enable one-stop service for many types of applications.

Our Client

The Hong Kong Immigration Department (ImmD), plays a very important role in maintaining the security and prosperity of Hong Kong. It is responsible for controlling the entry and departure of all people at its borders and safeguarding it against threats. It is also responsible for enforcing immigration control within the city. The Department has a Registration of Persons Division where citizens register births, deaths and marriages and obtain identity cards. It also issues passports and other international travel documents.

Business Needs

The Department processes over a hundred different type of application forms for travel documents, identity cards, visas, or other permits and certificates. In 2004, roughly 4 million application forms were submitted to the Department. The speedy and accurate processing for all application forms is essential in supporting the economy and growth of Hong Kong.

AI Technology

Our AI technology is part of the Immigration Department's eBrain project. Our software provides a full range of intelligent AI-services to support the Immigration Department's next generation form and document processing systems. AI-services provided by our software included rule-based assessment, workflow processing, schema-based suggestions, data mining, case-based reasoning, and machine learning.

Business Benefits

The main objective of the project is to provide an adequate set of advanced AI technologies to help streamline processes and workflows for all the application form processing needs for the Immigration Department, thus greatly shortening the turnaround time for millions of Hong Kong citizens and visitors, which in turn helps facilitate Hong Kong's economic growth. This project is probably the first time any immigration department in the world is using AI for automatic application assessment in such a large scale.

Awards/Recognitions:

  • 2007 Hong Kong ICT Award
    [Jan 2008] The Immigration Department won the Gold Award for Best Business (Application) Award in the 2007 HK ICT Awards competition for its electronic passport system which uses our "AI Engine."
  • 2007 Asia-Pacific ICT Award
    [Nov 2007] The Immigration Department won the "Best e-Government and e-Community Award" in the 2007 Asia Pacific ICT Awards competition for its electronic passport system.
  • 2007 Innovative Applications of AI Award
    [July 2007] The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) awarded our AI engine with a "2007 Innovative Applications of AI Award," in the category of "Deployed Applications." This is a prestigious international award, given to only a few companies each year.

Press Coverages:

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