The Global Case Management System (GCMS) is Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s (CIC’s) single, integrated and worldwide system used internally to process applications for citizenship and immigration services.
The most recent Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) on GCMS was submitted to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) in December 2011. As the system continues to evolve, updates to the PIA will be completed if there are major changes in the functionality of GCMS that impact privacy.
GCMS stores only the type of personal information required to process citizenship and immigration clients. The type of personal information collected includes, but is not limited to, client identification (i.e., family name and given names, gender, date of birth, country of birth, etc.), contact information and history, educational and employment information.
GCMS provides a level of protection that reflects CIC’s need for information availability and integrity, Government of Canada requirements for protected B level information, and the requirements of the Privacy Act and associated Treasury Board policies.
Some low level privacy risks have been identified as part of this assessment and most have been mitigated. The remaining risk relates to the granting of authority by Library and Archives Canada to delete information from GCMS. They have recommended that their appraisal of the system’s information and subsequent coverage of a Records Disposition Authority (RDA) be completed only once the system has been fully implemented for all immigration lines of business. GCMS will cover all immigration lines of business by 2013/2014
With the GCMS note you can see how your file is progressing at the visa office