Development of a web based immigration information management system in Tanzania

Tanzania like other Least Developed Countries (LDCs), uncontrolled immigration is a major problem resulting from unreliable immigration information management system that can deliver services and sharing of information about migrants in timely manner at different entry-exit points. This has led to increase of major crises in political, social and economic instabilities in these countries. So, the objective of this research was to develop a web-based Immigration Information Management System (IIMS) to facilitate timely processing and sharing of immigration information in the Immigration Department in Tanzania. Methodology; in this study structured questionnaires were used to interview the immigration officers in three entry-exit points and immigration headquarter in Tanzania to acquire information regarding the existing immigration information management system. Also MySQL, apache and PhD applications were used to design and develop a web-based IIMS. According to this research, it was found that, the existing system was manually done and unable to manage migrants' information in Tanzania in timely manner and accurately. So, the designed IIMS system was found to be capable of delivering information about migrants electronically more accurate and in a time manner. The proposed IIMS system enhances communication among particular entry-exit point to headquarter in timely manner and cost effectively as compared to existing manual immigration system since only investment costs will be incurred. In the future however, it will be important to improve the developed IIMS system so that it will be able to automatically notifies the headquarter about any immigrant overstayed in the country and be able to track movements of immigrants in the implementing the system to each known hotels and guest houses.