Hanis: Pray government gets it right

The Home Affairs National Identification System (Hanis) is probably the sexiest application of technology I`ve yet to come across. It has very few exciting blinking lights, no curves to speak of and is made up of run-of-the-mill components, but the possibilities are mind-blowing.

Government will have to make it absolutely clear that Hanis, and the smart cards, will allow it to catch the bad guys without endangering the freedom of the good guys.

Phillip de Wet, News editor, ITWeb

Here is a quick exercise: add together all of the time you have spent in queues at a Home Affairs office to apply for an ID book/passport/marriage certificate/birth certificate/visa. Now add the time spent going back to collect your documentation. Finally (make sure you are sitting down) imagine never having to do so ever again.

If you are in the banking or credit industries your palms should already be sweaty at the thought of virtually eliminating identity fraud. If the big four banks pool the money that this will save them in the first year, they should be able to buy, say, Madagascar.

Hanis in itself will not make these things happen. In fact, the combination of Hanis and a badly run back-office or outright corruption at Home Affairs will mean the exact opposite - more identity fraud and longer queues.

On the other hand, none of it is possible without Hanis. Efficiency demands an authoritative central database with enough information to identify individuals in a nearly foolproof way. A combination of DNA and retina scans would be better, but fingerprints should do.

There are many things that still stand in the way, such as the small matter of coughing up around R3 billion to manufacture the smart cards. However, this pales to insignificance next to the central problem, that of public acceptance.

Even a government with a huge majority has to be sensitive to the will of the people and correctly applied pressure can scuttle any project. The system would fall apart if people flatly refuse to accept or use ID smart cards.

Whether this happens depends solely on the public relations expertise the government throws into the education campaign which is to precede the card roll-out. A scary thought considering its track record with Aids and Zimbabwe.

It took about 10 seconds for the first poorly-informed commentator to bandy about the phrase "Orwellian nightmare" after the Hanis system commissioning earlier this week. I`ll accept bets at any odds you care to mention that it will happen again every time the system hits the news.

The instinctive mistrust free people all over the world show to central government databases is probably not misplaced. The potential to use such information to monitor and suppress is certainly there. But with the exception of tinfoil-hat-wearing Americans, people are also willing to swap a wee bit of privacy for gain or convenience. Ask any Web marketer that has run a successful online survey with a few measly prizes up for grabs.

Also take into consideration that there is no new data being gathered here. The government has had a photograph and full set of fingerprints of every citizen since the 1980s. Before it was a mess, now it will be categorised and usable.

Beside the benefits to every citizen, it will also be a boon to law enforcement, and this is the one thing that could save the system from the populist rhetoric that will surely seek to undermine it. The government will have to make it absolutely clear that Hanis, and the smart cards, will allow it to catch the bad guys without endangering the freedom of the good guys. Crime is wired directly to the voting instinct and will easily overcome the noise from the Orwellian crowd.

Pray that the government gets it right this time. If Hanis fails it will be more than a generation before any government attempts another such project. I, for one, do not want to stand in queues for the rest of my life.