The head of the Northern Ireland Farm Animal Information System (NIFAIS) has said that the IT rollout has seen “some teething issues” with accessibility.
Nigel Trimble said the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) is aware that some users, especially farmers and veterinary practitioners, are not set up correctly for accessing NIFAIS through government gateway authentication.
NIFAIS went live on Monday (September 4) after months of delays and replaced the old Animal and Public Health System (APHIS).
Trimble said replacing APHIS is “a complex task” as NIFAIS is one of the largest and most complex systems ever delivered by DAERA.
“As with any complex IT system roll-out, there have been some teething issues, including system performance, which we are working to address as quickly as possible and our thanks to all the users including farmers, private veterinary practices and the livestock marts and meat plants for their continued patience as the system becomes fully embedded,” he said.
“We are aware that some users, especially farmers and veterinary practitioners, are not set up correctly for accessing NIFAIS through government gateway authentication and we continue to work with these users to address this.
“Some online users will also not have access to all the herds they previously could view on APHIS due to revised DAERA policy implemented on NIFAIS which restricts access to herds online to the herd keeper or an agent appointed by them.
“Anyone needing a NIFAIS agent approved for online access should contact their DAERA direct office. Other issues noted this week were an inability to confirm some moves online.”
Trimble stressed that users can confirm moves using MC2 documentation or via DAERA telephony system to avoid imposition of late movement notification statuses if they are unable to do so online.
NIFAIS
DAERA said tens of thousands of animal movements, thousands of animal births and thousands of animals being moved to meat plants have all been registered in the first four days of the bovine functionality going live on NIFAIS.
This latest deployment is a major step towards fully replacing APHIS by 2025, it said.
In the four days since the new system went live there have been:
- 2,123 farmer or agent accounts accessing NIFAIS online;
- 4,232 birth registrations;
- 22,194 animal movements recorded;
- 132 PVP users accessing system for TB testing.
Trimble said NIFAIS will address legacy technology and security risks associated with APHIS and improve functionality and services available to the agri-food sector in Northern Ireland.
