In search of a smart standard

Johannesburg, 07 Apr 2000

A decision on the smart card standard to be used by the national government needs to be taken soon. But many issues still need to be settled before the tender process can kick off.

The South African Multi-application Identification Card (Samid) is a sub-project of the Home Affairs National Identification System (Hanis) system, the primary tender for which has already been awarded.

"The Hanis project is on track," says Masenye Masemola of the Department of Home Affairs. "The only part missing is the smart card. Hanis and Samid have become separated, but they need to be combined and co-exist."

The primary requirement of the card is that it becomes a final and virtually foolproof method of identification, and the main way of identification will be by fingerprints. Sexier technologies like retinal scanning may exist, but the government is not interested. "There is an existing database of 45 million fingerprints," says Health Department director Shaheen Khotu. "We must make use of it."

A partnership between the Departments of Health and Home Affairs on identification is natural, Khotu says. According to statistics, the Department of Home Affairs manages to identify less than 20% of the population shortly after birth. But the Department of Health treats a far larger percentage of people in its hospitals and clinics, and also needs to keep track of patients.

The card is to make use of three levels of identification: a visual inspection of the card, an offline check of the biometrics stored on the chip against those of the bearer, and an online check of those biometrics against records stored in a central database. With the various national government data networks now under the centralised control of the State IT Agency (SITA), the latter is expected to be possible from all urban centres.

Identification is not the problem. Real estate on the chip will be limited, and everyone is expected to want a piece of it. Information such as drivers licences and criminal records seem natural contenders, but welfare, housing and even income tax data stored onboard would be a boon for various government departments. An inter-departmental committee will have to decide who gets precedence.

The assumption that such a massive issue of smart cards will automatically mean a leap in the adoption of electronic money may be dented by such sought-after capacity, not to mention the complications of inter-operability and security. At a Samid seminar hosted by SITA, many of the delegates were firm on the issue - a needs analysis is unlikely to identify e-commerce as important, as only a small percentage of the population has any contact with the Internet.

Maybe the bearer can have the choice of using the identification card for e-cash. Perhaps two separate cards can be issued, or existing bank smart cards can be adapted to identification purposes. But for now, the Samid technical group and various sub-groups will examine available systems and standards for suitability.