How is data managed in different phases of asylum procedure? What challenges do Member States meet when managing the data? You will learn about it in the study of the European Migration Network Accurate, timely, interoperable? Data management in the asylum procedure.
The study maps approaches of the EU Member States and Norway at managing data acquired in different phases of asylum procedure (making, registering, lodging and examining of an application) and covers the situation and developments in the area between 2014 and 2020. It provides comparable information and examples on different aspects of data management, including data cross-checking against national and international databases, data quality accuracy and data protection. It also maps the challenges and responses to address them. The study also briefly examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemics on data management in asylum procedure. The statistics cover the period from 2014 to 2019. The study contributes to capacity building of experts working in the field of asylum as well as to better understanding of existing policies and processes in the area across Europe.
The study has identified categories of data that most Member States collect during the asylum procedure. These are name, birth date, citizenship, contact details, health status, photo, fingerprints, information of family members already in a Member State, information on vulnerability and level of education. Such data are primarily collected during oral interviews, through questionnaires and electronic tools (in case of biometric data). Some Member States have started to use social networks, mobile devices or artificial intelligence in the data collection process.
In the area of data quality assessment, the study found out that most Member States cross check data during the asylum procedure against European and national databases (e.g. Visa Information System, Schengen Information System, Eurodac). Only a few Member States cross check information against international databases. The EU legislation in the area of data protection requires that the Member States apply safeguards in the asylum procedure, e.g. providing a privacy notice to applicants, assessing the quality of data collected and implementing data protection supervisory mechanisms.
The most common challenges that the Member States identified relate to human and financial resources constraints and the interoperability of databases. The countries adopted different measures to address these challenges, such as consolidation of databases to increase their interoperability, channeling asylum applications to prioritise certain cases, or implementing contingency measures to ease the asylum process in times of high numbers of applicants. In response to challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemics, some Member States introduced further digitalisation of some steps of the asylum procedure and changes in the collection of fingerprints.
The study is accompanied by a shorter Inform and a Flash. The national study for Slovakia in a questionnaire format is available in Slovak and English language. All documents can be downloaded in the Publications section.