The department of home affairs is making good progress with the development of a modern IT system that will provide a single source of identification for citizens across state institutions and private entities.
Development of the system, the automated biometric identification system (Abis) got off the ground in 2016 but encountered glitches when the service provider, EOH, withdrew and French multinational technology company Idemia was contracted to take over in April. It will integrate with other systems inside and outside home affairs to create a single source for biometric authentication of citizens and noncitizens.
The department slapped EOH with a R44m penalty for the delays in finalising the project and its director-general, Tommy Makhode, told members of parliament’s home affairs committee on Tuesday that the matter of penalties was the subject of arbitration, which needed a value for money audit to be conducted to determine the amount of the penalty. An amount of R465m was allocated for the project of which about R200m remained.
He said the department was working around the clock to finalise the Abis project. The first phase will be completed in December 2021 and if testing is successful, it will be introduced on a trial basis. Abis will run parallel with the existing Home Affairs Information System (Hanis) for about a year.
Together with the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) the department is also progressing with its plans to bolster its IT system to reduce the downtimes that lead to long queues at its offices around the country. MPs were very encouraged by the progress made so far.
Relations between Sita and the department reached a low point when home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi expressed frustration at its slow pace of upgrading the department's IT system, but deputy minister Njabulo Nzuza told MPs that the two entities now had a good working relationship.
Makhode said the department was working with Sita to overcome the downtime problems in the department with many of the projects that form part of the investment plan due for completion by end-March 2022. The plan involves securing critical IT infrastructure to improve the efficiency of the department’s offices. Makhode stressed that “a reliable and high-capacity network is essential to continued operations”.
Sita is modernising core network infrastructure to prevent the effects of switching centre outages on the department’s front offices and has appointed a service provider to undertake this.
Makhode noted that the IT investment plan required more funding.
To address electricity supply disruptions during load-shedding, 176 offices had been supplied with generators, leaving 292 sites without them. The department’s CFO, Gordon Hollamby, noted that it would cost in excess of R10bn to modernise all the remaining offices and only three would be modernised by the end of 2021.
With regard to the branch appointment booking system, which will allow people to book appointments with home affairs offices, Makhode said five offices would be piloted in December. That would reduce excessive queueing and corruption.
Hollamby noted the decline in 2021 in the department’s revenue, which is derived from money earned from issuing passports and ID books. In a normal year it would receive more than R1.1bn from that source whereas the projection for the current year was only R562m due to Covid-19 lockdowns, which prevented people from visiting the department’s offices. He said the department was looking to increase the amount payable for ID books and passports to increase revenue and the Government Printing Works, which produces them, had agreed to reduce their cost from April.
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