R500m for Home Affairs tech

Johannesburg, 19 Jun 2009

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) will spend more than R500 million on IT projects, in an effort to improve service delivery and immigration services and fight corruption.

In its medium-term expenditure estimates for 2009/10, the department emphasised the importance of its IT projects and reinforced the role technology played in improved service delivery.

The DHA has been allocated R5 billion overall for the medium-term. The department's services to citizens programme, which carries out the department's core functions, has been allocated R1.3 billion - a 9% increase from the 2008/9 estimate of R1.2 billion.

Administration services, which provide overall management and centralised support services, will receive R1.087 billion. Immigration services have been allocated R1.3 billion, a 19% increase from 2008/9 estimates of R1.1 billion.

IT projects will receive R514 million and this allocation will grow to R652 million in 2010/11, but decrease again in 2011/12, with an estimated R561 million.

The department has allocated R142 million for its 2010 readiness programme through Who Am I Online, while the roll-out of smart ID cards is set to cost R104 million for 2009/10. Identification infrastructure has been allocated R60 million, while information service infrastructure will receive R95 million.

The Hanis disaster recovery system received R25 million, while the Hanis technology refresh programme was allocated R37 million. Business intelligence projects received R19 million and electronic document management systems were allocated R3.3 million.

The department receives additional allocations of R320 million for 2009/10, R482 million for 2010/11, and R752 million for 2011/12. Included in these allocations are provisions for organisation implementation; Who Am I Online; the Government Printing Works (GPW) for the passport system; and the Electoral Commission for the upgrade of portable bar code scanners.

Future focus

The department says it will pay special attention to improving the security of documents and related systems in 2009/10.

Over the medium-term period, spending will focus mainly on the issuing of the smart identity card, which will replace the green bar-coded identity documents. Following several delays to the project, the department revealed a pilot of 50 000 cards will be implemented during the first quarter of 2009/10.

The department says it will also accelerate the roll-out of its online fingerprint verification systems to offices across the country. Currently, 215 offices are equipped to perform this function, including the 40 highest volume offices. The equipment allows for the immediate checking of fingerprints for customers whose fingerprints are already on the department's system. The DHA claims this has resulted in the increased processing of applications and aims to increase its efficiency this year.

Home Affairs adds it will accelerate its efforts to update and maintain the National Population Register. The department hopes this will make a significant contribution to the fight against corruption by preventing officials from fraudulently entering individuals' details on the register. It also hopes that, through the GPW, the tamper-proof security features in documents will help root out corruption involving employees and criminal syndicates.

Improving immigration services is also key, notes the DHA. In a bid to improve its efficiency, the department will develop IT applications for the advanced passenger information and advanced passenger profiling systems for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. The passenger information and profiling systems, which allow airlines to send information on passengers to immigration officers, are being piloted during the 2009 Fifa Confederations Cup.