SA Home Affairs counters passport forgery

The South African Department of Home Affairs has raised passport security levels and become a world player through the revamp of its passport system.

Following the global trend towards machine-readable passports, the department introduced an encoded section on the bottom of the passport document, containing the personal particulars of the holder.

Eugene Kritzinger, director: citizenship, travel documents and population register of the department of Home Affairs, maintains the high level of local document forgery prompted the department to relook the manual passport application process. "The integrity of South Africa passports was being infringed as the manual processing of local passports made forgery far easier.

"We had to find a method of capturing images of the applicant`s photograph, signature and thumbprint at our 31 regional offices, immediately passing the details on to a central repository with limited access, so as to create a tamper-proof system."

Using a video camera and PC, the photographic image, thumbprint and signature are sent electronically to the main Pretoria-based office. Here, the intricate process of verification takes place, with the information package being sent firstly to the main passport file server. Once this is done, the information is compared to that already stored within the population register.

The ID strip is then printed and sent to the fingerprint section for matching against the existing fingerprint records. Says Kritzinger: "If the prints are positively identified, the passport is printed by the passport issuing `factory` and dispatched to the applicant.

"Because the entire system has been computerised the interference of people with fraudulent intent is limited. A centralised process, although lengthier than the handwritten method, means far greater control at every stage of the document production."

According to Stephen Fourie of software company SPL, part of the Dimension Data Group, Home Affairs purchased Software AG`s database management solution Adabas D and application development tool Natural on the Windows platform to do this.

"As the department was already using Natural and Adabas successfully on the mainframe, it made sense to use them on a Windows platform for the front-end. The Software AG Entire range of middleware was a logical choice to link all areas together. Communication with the mainframe was critical as it contains all known ID numbers and fingerprint classifications."

Says Fourie: "The image capturing software was acquired by the Home Affairs department for producing temporary voter cards during the 1994 elections. There was pressure on the development team, as a non-negotiable deadline for the system was set by cabinet. The project team learnt about Software AG products on the job. It was a stiff learning curve considering the deadline, but SPL was very helpful." The system took a year to develop, following intensive research, and was completed on time.

SPL are sole local representatives of Software AG in Southern Africa.