BRIEFING TO THE TRANSPORT PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE BY JEFF RADEBE, MP, MINISTER OF
TRANSPORT
PARLIAMENT, CAPE TOWN
23 MAY
2007
Honourable Members
Today I stand before you to address you on the Electronic National Traffic Information
System by your request.
In my
briefing, I will address all issues pertaining to the eNaTIS system,
concerns
around long queues at service centres, vehicle registration queries, licence
renewals, learner driver and driver test bookings, the Auditor-General’s
report.
Awarding of eNaTIS
contract
The Tender for the
eNaTIS was issued in November 2000 and it was closed in February 2001. It was
awarded to Masiye Phambili (Tasima), a consortium consisting of a prime
contractor and two BEE contractors in July 2001.
Contract RT1194KA was signed on 3 December 2001 with Tasima (Pty) Ltd through a process led by the State
tender Board. This decision to award to Tasima was challenged in the High
Court in Feb 2002 by one of the unsuccessful bidders. The High Court reviewed
the tender process and dismissed the application with costs. This is a clear
indication that the awarding of the tender was procedural.
Reasons for replacing the old NaTIS with the eNaTIS
The NaTIS system
has been in operation for 14 years and could not continue to support the road
traffic environment. Coupled with this, ageing technology could
not be maintained any further and had become an unmanageable risk.
The NaTIS system had
become very expensive to maintain and almost impossible to enhance, and thus
could not deal with the long queues and average waiting periods of 1 hour or
more at service centers.
The eNaTIS provides South Africa with the following immediate
advantages
Centralisation of Road traffic management data
Elimination of
fragmented small systems
Reduction in queues due
to the implementation of online transactions
Improved system
security
Lower
operating costs of the system
Convenient easy
interaction with the system by members of the public, and
Rapid deployment of new
software
eNaTIS is one of the
most advanced Traffic Management systems in the world. Similar systems are
found in Europe and in the US but none have the sophistication of the eNaTIS in
respect of Road Transport Management capability
It Interfaces directly
with SAPS, motor manufacturers, vehicle builders, vehicle importers,
investigative agencies, financial institutions, insurance companies
Vehicles are managed on
the system from factory floor to scrap yard
Fraudulent introduction
of stolen or hijacked vehicles is entirely eliminated, and
It is a Powerful tool
used by the entire motor and financial industry
Successful migration
of data from NaTiS
4.6
billion records were migrated to the new system without compromising or
damaging any data in the process
The system
was commissioned on 12 April 2007 and apart from slow response on 1 particular transaction
(vehicle registration) it has operated in a satisfactory manner thus far.
The system is dependant
on sufficient database server capacity. The vehicle population increased by 53%
since the issue of the tender and this additional capacity had to be catered
for
When the eNaTIS was
deployed on 12 April
2007 the system was
overloaded by huge demand for transactions caused by backlogs that were created
during the 5 day migration period
The system had to cope
with the usual high demand for transactions and the demand for backlog
transactions
Service centers are
also reluctant to extend business hours beyond 08:00 am – 15:00 pm to deal with backlog transactions
Interventions
implemented
Database capacity was
increased to deal with the artificially high demand for transactions
Specialists including
representatives from the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), Oracle, HP
were tasked to optimise the system and to ensure immediate system stability
even during the high peak periods
System stability and
satisfactory performance was reached by 8 May 2007
Since 8 May the system
performed transactions at a rate higher than the previous NaTIS system and no
system downtime has been reported except for the 1 hour experienced yesterday
due to the power blackout
Current status
Old NaTIS
performed average of 287,000 transactions per day (Mar 07)
Between 13
April and 7 May eNaTIS performed average 326,000 transactions per day (13,4%
more) with 93% uptime
After
interventions (since 8 May 07) eNaTIS performed average 619,000 transactions
per day (115% more) with 100% uptime.
Auditor-General’s
report
A correction needs
to be made regarding this report. The report in question relates to the “Information
Project Management and Systems Development Life Cycle Controls Surrounding the
eNaTIS System”. This management report was never issued to the
Director-General of Transport. Instead the report that was received by the
Director-General in February 2006 relates to the Information System Audit of
the Network Security at the Department of Transport on the Natis and eNaTIS
systems.
Audit processes are
governed by a particular process where the findings have to be verified first
then disputed or acknowledged before they are contained in a draft report which
can be further discussed before a final one is issued.
These processes are aimed at protecting the auditor and the auditee.
The office of the
Auditor General delivered the report in question for the first time only on the 22nd May 2007 to the office of the Director
General of Transport Department.
The
Department will study this report in detail and give an appropriate response in
due course.
Issued by the Department of Transport
Media contact: Collen Msibi @ 082 414 5279