The Department of Home Affairs plans to digitise 286 million records as part of a newly launched digitisation project, in partnership with Statistics South Africa.
Speaking at the launch, home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba said digitising records will make them more easily accessible, and modernising the department means using the most modern, innovative technology and management approaches to fulfil the department's mandate.
"It means taking the inconvenience away from our clients. It means moving from a paper-based department with all the accompanying inefficiencies, slow processes, security risks and opportunities for corruption, to a digital department which is efficient, fast and secure," according to Gigaba.
The department says birth certificates will be prioritised, followed by other documents. The department has 286 million records, of which 90% are still in paper format. Most of these are records of births, marriages, deaths, ID applications, naturalisation and permitting, and date back to the late 1800. These include 110 million birth records and the department plans to digitise 5.8 million birth records a year.
The department says records will be indexed by ID number for easy retrieval and will be able to be accessed immediately, irrespective of office location. Electronic records can be viewed and accessed by more than one person simultaneously, eliminating the reliance on individuals for knowledge as the document is accessible by multiple staff.
"South Africans have already seen a glimpse of this modern, digital future and experienced its benefits when applying for smart ID cards and passports in modernised offices through eHomeAffairs. South Africans were used to waiting months for these documents only a few years ago, and now get them in a few days," the minister said.
He added the space for housing documents is also scarce and expensive.
"The time required for staff to physically locate and access individual records means lead times of weeks and months for many transactions, such as amendments and reprints of older birth and marriage certificates.
"Paper records are vulnerable to loss, deterioration and fire, despite the care with which we store them. Digitising these records means we will be able to access records quickly," Gigaba said.