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PETALING JAYA, Oct 8 — Passport holders were left bewildered once again when an online glitch triggered a systems disruption delaying renewals of travel documents at Immigration and Urban Transformation Centre counters nationwide on Thursday.
“The disruptions were caused by a network failure which links the Immigration Department’s system with service vendor Dgcert,” Immigration director-general Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali said in a statement.
Dgcert is a vendor that provides a service to the Immigration Department allowing officers to carry out passport renewals to check on applicants.
“It was caused by the unstable infrastructure at Dgcert that resulted in officers having problems when carrying out inspection on those who wished to renew their passports,” he said.
Mustafar said inspections were necessary to verify the identity of passport holders when they turned up to renew their travel documents.
The system enables counter officers to authenticate the identity of the passport holder against details embedded in the highly secure travel document.
The breakdown took place at about 7.30am, shortly after operation hours commenced, and Mustafar said the vendor initiated prompt action to address glitches which triggered the breakdown.
The system resumed operating without problems at about 9.30am.
In recent months, the Immigration Department was plagued with problems related to the issuance of Malaysian passports and its reputation was dealt a further blow when the egate at klia2 malfunctioned.
This caused a major delay for passengers returning to the country when they had to undergo manual passport inspections.
There were also reports of passport shortage due to a migration from old copies to new high tech security featured documents which inconvenienced many travellers
Meanwhile, a source said almost all services and systems of the Immigration Department are provided by vendors.
“There are so many systems used and they are all from different vendors. That makes it difficult when there is a crisis as we are dependant on them,” the source explained.
Malay Mail reported on June 16 the department faced a serious shortage of new passports, with Penang, Perak and Johor being worst hit.
“The department did not have sufficient stock of passports as a large number of chips used in the data page were rejected by Percetakan Keselamatan Nasional Sdn Bhd (National Security Printers) or the Immigration Department as they were either damaged or failed to be able to be scanned by electronic desktop passport readers,” the source said.
In response to Malay Mail’s series of reports on the matter, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had then said he instructed Immigration Department to increase the number of passports to 20,000 daily and for them to be delivered to its offices nationwide.
Sources previously revealed the department struggled to cope with demand as they had insufficient stock of passports as a large number of the microchips embedded in the data page were purportedly defective.
Zahid, who is also Home Minister, said Datasonic Group Berhad — appointed to supply the biodata polycarbonate data page — would work closely with NPD to resolve the matter.
- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/m...it-by-yet-another-glitch#sthash.KUCpRo6l.dpuf
“The disruptions were caused by a network failure which links the Immigration Department’s system with service vendor Dgcert,” Immigration director-general Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali said in a statement.
Dgcert is a vendor that provides a service to the Immigration Department allowing officers to carry out passport renewals to check on applicants.
“It was caused by the unstable infrastructure at Dgcert that resulted in officers having problems when carrying out inspection on those who wished to renew their passports,” he said.
Mustafar said inspections were necessary to verify the identity of passport holders when they turned up to renew their travel documents.
The system enables counter officers to authenticate the identity of the passport holder against details embedded in the highly secure travel document.
The breakdown took place at about 7.30am, shortly after operation hours commenced, and Mustafar said the vendor initiated prompt action to address glitches which triggered the breakdown.
The system resumed operating without problems at about 9.30am.
In recent months, the Immigration Department was plagued with problems related to the issuance of Malaysian passports and its reputation was dealt a further blow when the egate at klia2 malfunctioned.
This caused a major delay for passengers returning to the country when they had to undergo manual passport inspections.
There were also reports of passport shortage due to a migration from old copies to new high tech security featured documents which inconvenienced many travellers
Meanwhile, a source said almost all services and systems of the Immigration Department are provided by vendors.
“There are so many systems used and they are all from different vendors. That makes it difficult when there is a crisis as we are dependant on them,” the source explained.
Malay Mail reported on June 16 the department faced a serious shortage of new passports, with Penang, Perak and Johor being worst hit.
“The department did not have sufficient stock of passports as a large number of chips used in the data page were rejected by Percetakan Keselamatan Nasional Sdn Bhd (National Security Printers) or the Immigration Department as they were either damaged or failed to be able to be scanned by electronic desktop passport readers,” the source said.
In response to Malay Mail’s series of reports on the matter, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had then said he instructed Immigration Department to increase the number of passports to 20,000 daily and for them to be delivered to its offices nationwide.
Sources previously revealed the department struggled to cope with demand as they had insufficient stock of passports as a large number of the microchips embedded in the data page were purportedly defective.
Zahid, who is also Home Minister, said Datasonic Group Berhad — appointed to supply the biodata polycarbonate data page — would work closely with NPD to resolve the matter.
- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/m...it-by-yet-another-glitch#sthash.KUCpRo6l.dpuf
