Country of Origin Information – Content Management System (COI-CMS) is a database used to create and update country of origin (COI) information. COI is needed by decision makers in asylum and migrations processes to determine if factual evidence can demonstrate the existence of persecution in a certain country. It assesses the credibility of statements provided by asylum seekers and foreigners, and helps to decide if a certain country is considered a safe country of origin.
COI-CMS was developed as a platform for providing COI throughout asylum and immigration procedures not only for authorities in Austria, but also internationally. It is an entirely new system developed through a genesis and evolution of the former system of separate COI products (documents) designed in close cooperation with COI-producers and COI-consumers.
COI-CMS is intended to serve both the creation and timely updating of COI as well as making its use in asylum and immigration procedures easier and more efficient. New information is incorporated directly into the database and thus the content is kept up to date.
COI-CMS offers the possibility to choose the relevant sections of COI according to the needs of the individual case. If necessary, it can transfer the information into a separate document or at a later stage, even directly into the asylum decision.
The possibility to easily go through and select customised information contributes to a more efficient and targeted use of the information in asylum decisions. It also shortens these written decisions, which was identified as a need in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ‘Bridge Project’ in Austria. Overall, this contributes to improve the quality of the asylum procedure.
Another important aspect and aim was to create a user-friendly working interface for the COI experts, where time-consuming formal aspects of the work can be neglected because formal aspects are mostly automated (e.g. script styles for different elements, automated date of last modification per chapter and automated tracked changes in the peer review process). The interface also offers some aspects which make the lives of COI experts drafting the content much easier, for example an individual to-do-list.
While saving time in some formal aspects COI-CMS offers complete documentation, traceability and transparency of the process of drafting country of origin information as demanded by the methodology, which follows European COI standards.
Peer review is performed on every piece of information in the system (depending on country of origin, this is based on a six- or eight-eyes principle). Changes made during the quality control processes are tracked and every step of the quality control is archived together with outdated versions of content.
In general, importance is being given to joint work and COI-CMS is highly cooperative. The system enables cooperation not only inside the team of Staatendokumentation but also on a national or EU, and even international level between partner organisations. It is possible to split different steps of creating the content (drafting, peer review and approval) not only between different people but also organisations, or to split individual sections between different people and organisations. This means not only different people inside the home department but also people from different organisations can cooperate in different ways in providing content, which makes effective and efficient burden sharing on a national and European level possible.