Home Affairs forges ahead with Hanis

Johannesburg, 24 Oct 2006

Home Affairs is ready to move ahead with the integration of its database and the population register as it moves forward with implementing its electronic ID system.

The department yesterday celebrated the conclusion of the process of digitising 29.6 million fingerprints, which deputy director-general Kgabo Hlahla says will assist it in speeding up applications.

However, the most significant time reduction in processing applications is likely to be seen when smart cards officially come into play. The introduction of smart cards will take process time down from between six and eight weeks to as little as 72 hours, he says. However, a policy decision is still expected before this can be implemented.

The department`s Home Affairs National Identification System (Hanis), which started in 1999, has so far seen the completion of an automated fingerprint system, which converts paper prints to electronic form, and the systems integration that links these prints to specific ID numbers, he says.

Back-office integration

The third step is the roll-out of new ID cards, for which Hlahla does not yet have a time line. However, before this can be done, he says back-office information has to be redesigned to enable smart IDs.

The next step for the department is to redesign the population register, which will see the system integrated at a central point. This will also enable better online services.

The department was initially scanning only 5 000 prints a day but at the end of 2004 it brought another service vendor on board that scanned between 65 000 and 125 000 prints a day. "What we couldn`t achieve in four years, we were able to achieve in 18 months."

Hlahla says having fingerprints stored on paper was impacting negatively on the department`s ability to deliver services. He says the 12 000 applications it receives a day had to be manually compared with paper prints.

The challenge now, he says, is to roll-out the ID cards. After that - in the next two or three years - Hlahla says applications will be available online as long as the applicant has a digital fingerprint reader.

In addition, disadvantaged South Africans will not be left out of the loop as centres will - and are being - made available. Community workers, for example, already go into communities and make use of satellite connections to process applications.