PRESENTATION TO THE PARLIAMENTARY
PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON HOME AFFAIRS
By
I Lambinon
Acting Director-General
18 March 2003

1. INTRODUCTION:

It is a privilege to meet with this distinguished Committee once more and to report to you on pertinent matters that relate to policy initiatives and operational progress within the Department of Home Affairs. The guidance provided by the Portfolio Committee in the determination of the future direction of the Department, as well as the practical support demonstrated in resolving pressing issues such as inadequate funding, is highly appreciated.

Notable progress has been made with regard to some important matters reported to this Committee at the previous meeting. A number of key issues remain and require priority attention. Both are discussed in this document.

The Portfolio Committee has addressed some specific questions to the Department on which it requires elucidation. These are dealt with in this presentation and can be further clarified, if so required, during the discussions.

Of particular note, especially in the light of the forthcoming Home Affairs Budget Vote, are financial expenditure and allocation trends in the Department. This, consequently, forms the main thrust of the discussion. Allocations and expenditure per programme, as well as per standard items are reflected upon and the actual budgetary increase analysed.

The Department has for some years steadily been working on the introduction of a strategic management approach. Apart from thereby complying with the strategic planning requirements of the Public Finance Management Act, 1999 (Act 1 of 1999) as amended, as well as the Integrated Strategic Framework of Cabinet, decision-making and action within all departmental cadres have progressively been mobilised and directed towards the achievement of identified change objectives and the realisation of the Home Affairs vision of rendering a world class service. The third annual departmental Strategic Plan has recently been finalised and will shortly be formally submitted to Parliament. We have thought it appropriate to attach the final draft of this Plan hereto for the information of the Portfolio Committee. In fact, many of the issues raised by the Committee have been incorporated in the Plan and are therefore already receiving systematic attention.

The Department is aware of the persistent inadequate reach of its services in deeply rural and marginalised urban communities. As a consequence, the matter received in depth attention during the last two annual strategic planning workshops of the Department. It is addressed in the departmental change plan under the focus area on service delivery processes (Change Objective 5). Various ways and means were considered to provide office infrastructure and services to those communities.

Of particular note is the way in which services to such disadvantaged communities are being addressed in the investigation on the determination of the new structure and personnel establishment of the Department that is presently being undertaken and will be finalised by 30 June 2003. The scientific formula designed to determine the location and staffing of offices, in fact, contains a built-in bias towards these areas, compensating in particular for distance in sparsely populated areas and taking into account, as well, the availability/absence of public transport. Areas with a population of less than 5 000 will be serviced by a fleet of mobile units that will be beefed-up significantly and these units will also be deployed in accordance with special requests, e.g. presentations from old age homes, schools, etc. In areas where the population exceeds 5 000, temporary service points will be opened (servicing those communities according to need on predetermined days). Where the population exceeds 40 000, permanent service points, and where it exceeds 80 000, district offices will be established. Evenly important is the new personnel dispensation for these eventualities, which for the first time provides for a dedicated personnel contingent attached to mobile units and service points. Up to now the staff of already understaffed district offices had to perform services in mobile units and service points, an arrangement that seriously impeded service delivery at district offices. Consequently, this development will have a tremendous overall positive effect on rural operations of the Department.

The Department does not allocate a specific budget for setting up mobile units. The following expenditure was, however, incurred at the Regions during the 2002/03 financial year, regarding transport costs, which included the mobile units.

In practical terms the sharing of mobile services between various stakeholder departments has evolved in certain locations. This is a worthy development that needs to be expanded and formalised. The involvement of Home Affairs in the Eastern Cape Interim Management Team (IMT) established by Cabinet will, amongst other service delivery improvement efforts, also pertinently focus on this aspect.

The Minister of Home Affairs has on various occasions stated his strategic vision of the devolution of the delivery interface of Civic Services to third tier government. A thorough investigation into this matter has been initiated and a first report has been produced. Various modalities of the departmental devolution initiative are currently the subject of further discussion and negotiation at the intergovernmental level. It is hoped that substantial progress will be made hereupon during 2003. Meanwhile, numerous interim arrangements between the Department and various municipalities, traditional leaders and NGO’s on the sharing of facilities, and co-operative service delivery have substantially progressed. Moreover, the Minister of Home Affairs has instructed that the Department provides services at all Multi-Purpose Community Centres. We are currently active at 34 MPCCs. Also, the Department has increasingly, and in line with Government policy, embarked on a process of utilising the services of volunteers to augment its in-house personnel capacities. Marked success has already been obtained in this field. Unfortunately the container office concept that was reported on to the Committee during the briefing of 4 June 2002 did not materialise. Apart from problems that occurred regarding the tender procedures followed, further investigations revealed that more cost-effective alternative options for rural infrastructure provision might be available.

The computerisation of Home Affairs offices, especially in remote rural areas, is a cornerstone of quality service rendering. During the current financial year 30 such rural offices were identified for computerisation. Of these 22 have already been fully computerised whilst the remaining eight are awaiting Telkom line upgrading in order to be linked. The cost hereof was R 4, 405 million. For the 2003/2004 financial year the computerisation of a further 30 offices at the cost of R 5 million is envisaged.

The IT backbone of Home Affairs is situated in Civitas Building, Pretoria, and constitutes the national and international communication platform of the Department. The ageing thereof has inhibited envisaged electronic transactions and thus necessitated upgrading to accommodate the expanded network of computerised offices. This was done at a cost of
R 5 million during the 2002/2003 financial year, whilst a further
R 1,4 million has been budgeted for this purpose during the 2003/2004 year. Largely due to the sensitive nature of our information and transactions, a project was also initiated at an initial cost of R 1,5 million to secure the entire Department against unauthorised access. This included technical risk assessment analyses, the formulation of sound security policies, as well as the purchase of security software and hardware. It is envisaged that a further R 10 million will be spent on this project during the ensuing financial year on: (1) the securing of five regions against unauthorised access; and (2) the securing of the Head Office environment against unauthorised access.

Obviously the ever-expanding business requirements of the Department dictate that our electronic systems and infrastructure needs be strategically aligned with such developments. We have embarked on a thorough analysis of our electronic infrastructure upgrade requirements.

Currently the Department has 1 915 vacant posts on its personnel establishment, including 358 vacancies at the Government Printing Works. The situation is aggravated by the fact that this establishment was determined as far back as 1995 and does therefore not take into account the spiralling need for departmental services since then. The current investigation into the establishment of the Department, referred to above, is directed at addressing this imbalance in a dynamic way. As an interim measure, Cabinet has approved the filling of 349 critical posts during the financial year 2003/2004. These posts will be filled as soon as possible after 1 April 2003. It is envisaged to fill the other critical vacant posts as soon as possible after the finalisation of the restructuring process of the Public Service, depending on the availability of funds. An amount of R20,933 million is included in the 2003/04 financial year, for the filling of these critical vacant posts. However, as indicated in the Budget Planning Submission (MTEF) 2003/04 – 2005/06, an additional amount of R67,908 was requested for the filling of 704 vacant posts during 2003/04. Capacity building among existing staff in order to enhance effectiveness and efficiency has been incorporated in an imaginative departmental human resources development strategy.

The objective of the EDMS is to implement an effective, real time, online solution that will cater for automated document management processes from capture to business transaction solution resulting in the overall improvement of business process efficiency. The system will make all Home Affairs records and archiving information, within the scope of the contract, available for access to any authorised individual at any workstation in the entire system.

The contract for the supply and implementation of Phase 1 of the EDMS was awarded to Choice Technologies in October 2001.

Phase 1 of the EDMS consists of the following:

• Design and implementation of a centralised core EDMS within the Department.

• Design and implementation of an associated electronic workflow component, which will effectively cater for the Department’s business process management.

• Implementation of the identified solution within the Civitas and New-Co-operation buildings.
• Integration of the identified solution with the National Population Register.

• Conversion of the existing microfilm records (± 53 million images) to online documentation format and integration of this documentation into the identified solution.

• Implementation of a centralised bulk scanning and indexing environment to initiate the capture of all new transaction documentation and to initiate the process of existing records back-capture pertaining to the Chief Directorate: Civic Services.

• Hardware and System Software

• White Laser Communication Infrastructure

• LAN Backbone Upgrade in Civitas

• Microfilm conversion process

• Bureau Scanning of documents pertaining to faulty microfilm rolls

• Training

• EDMS Facilities

• Bespoke Application

• National Population Register Integration (NPR)

• Fax Gateway

OUTSTANDING ITEMS

Most of the work in regard to Phase 1 has been completed and at this stage it is only the following elements that still have to be finalised before the system can fully go live:

• Completion of the indexing of images. This process is about 90% complete and it is envisaged to be finalised by the end of March 2003.
• Structural changes to the facilities in Civitas and New Co-operation buildings. This matter is being pursued through the Department of Public Works and it is planned to have the changes finalised within the next five weeks.
• Acquisition of additional juke boxes for storage of images. A tender in this regard is presently being finalised and it is envisaged to have the additional juke boxes on site by May 2003.

Due to unforeseen complications and delays in regard to the above it has unfortunately not been possible to go live on 1 September 2002 as originally planned. The projected commissioning date is now set for 30 May 2003.

The total costs for Phase 1 will be ± R70 million.

NOTABLE SYSTEM ACHIEVEMENTS

• Temporary In-house Scanning Facility

WAY FORWARD

• Implementation of Phase 1 (May 2003)
• Implementation of Phase 2: The intention with this phase is to roll out the functionality developed in Phase 1 to regional offices and to backscan records (births, marriages and deaths). The scope of Phase 2 is presently being revisited with a view to inviting new tenders as soon as possible after implementation of Phase 1. The tenders invited in September 2002 lapsed in January 2003 due to delays in the SITA evaluation processes.

Implementation of Phase 3:

The existing population register is more than 30 years old and needs to be rewritten. Not only does it largely use fairly antiquated programming languages and system approaches, but also, over the years, numerous programme patches were used to provide for changes in requirements. This has led to a situation where it is difficult to make further changes as it is often impossible to fully predict what all the results of a change will be.

The Department is presently in the process of appointing a project team to deal with the rewrite and with a view to inviting tenders for the rewrite as soon as possible.

5. THE HANIS PROJECT:

HANIS is basically a computer system intended to replace the old manual identification/verification processes at Home Affairs. By automating the processes, more accuracy is achieved at faster rates, thus improving service delivery while ensuring secure registration abilities by, among others, issuing a unique identity number. A machine-readable identity card, which would include a photograph and a thumbprint of the applicant, were envisaged as the key features of the HANIS card. The system has an interface with the Population Register System.

Above is the original definition of the system. The scope, as shall be seen, and as could be expected, has changed dramatically, with Change Management introducing a few vital things.

The system comprises the following major components:

• Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS)
• Identity Card
• System Integration

• ID Card application
• ID Card reissue
• Hardcopy verification
• On-line verification
• Off-line verification
• ID determination
• Case files

• Infrastructure Subsystem
• Image Capture Subsystem
• Control Subsystem
• Identification Subsystem
• Card Production Subsystem

• An average 6 000 records intake per day
• About 600 000 records already captured on the ID Card application
• About 38 000 records captured on the case files
• Using complex biometrics-reliant technologies, the system does not permit a situation whereby anyone could, like in the past have two identity numbers
• The system issues strictly unique identity numbers – no two persons can have the same identity number.

• Daily backlogs, about 5 000, as a result of image capture problems – technology considerations that led to delays
• The absence of a card is seen as a problem
• Concrete system value is yet to be seen.

• On-line Verification – the expansion of the initial verification service to cater for external bodies. This includes the HANIS Call Centre.
• Fast-track the image capture processes by looking at some options, for instance, the flatbed scanners, etc. to do Back Record Conversion / Selective Image Capture.
• Implement NEC Phase III for the expansion of the HANIS memory

• Employing Transaction Advisors
• Doing the options analysis exercise
• Feasibility Study
• Tender processes – RFQ, RFP, etc.
• Contract negotiations

5. THE MOVEMENT CONTROL SYSTEM: