The Eastern Cape has fully deployed the drivers' licence electronic booking system and is the last province to roll out the solution.
“The completion of the roll-out process has been long overdue and I must give a stern warning to the driving schools that there are no more block bookings now. It is high time that the department takes charge of its assets, one of them being the booking system within eNatis [electronic National Traffic Information System]. We cannot allow other people to take charge of what is ours,” says transport MEC Ghishma Barry.
The provincial Department of Transport (DOT) says: “All the provinces had their pilot sites and Queenstown was our pilot site and it was launched in October 2008. Since the launch of the booking system, we had no more manual allocation of dates and no manual recording of appointments.”
It adds that everything is now recorded by the system and the only thing that officials do manually now is to print the report every morning of the examination.
Random selection
The department explains the system is built up in a way that it allocates applicants to the first available date and time and randomises the examiners.
It adds that, as a measure to combat fraud and corruption, the system ensures that the availability of appointments is determined and managed by eNatis, the booking system calculates the number of available test appointments at any given Drivers' Licence Testing Centre (DLTC), based on the capacity of the centre in question, and information of the examiners who will be conducting specific tests will not be available to applicants (and vice versa).
The system also ensures that anonymous applicants will not be able to make block bookings, the scheduled times and dates are visible to the inspectorate of driving licences and the DOT investigations and forensics sub-directorate. It is not possible to capture test results or the issuing of a licence on the system if a test appointment was not made, and diaries of examiners will be fully controlled by the DLTC managers, according to the department.
“The booking system does not allow the replacement of the applicant or the examiner with another for a specific test,” it adds. “All booking transactions performed will be audited and available for management reports.”
Electronic booking
At a cursory level, eNatis essentially handles the registration of cars and booking of learners' and drivers' tests at various licensing and testing stations across the country. Officials say the service is in the process of being extended and may well handle other transport-related services, like online fine payment and the ability to renew drivers' licences online.
The project was prompted by the increasing need to come up with an efficient, secure and customer convenience system.
In addition to streamlining the booking process, the new booking system validates examiners, testing centres and appointments, and prevents unscrupulous officials from abusing the system by extorting money from the public in order to obtain driving licence appointments.
Further down the road, the system will also incorporate strict electronic tagging of documents to eradicate the falsification of vehicle licences, registration certificates and driving licence cards.
Despite complaints over a two-year period that the system was ineffective and dysfunctional - the Transport Department maintains the centralisation of the learner booking system is working very well and continues to eliminate the illegal sale of booking slots by corrupt officials.
The system has been deployed at more than 2 000 sites across the country and handles roughly 16 million queries a month.
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