The new South African ID card, which will soon replace the current ID book, will be processed within 48 hours, instead of the several weeks it currently takes. This follows Unisys Africa`s world first integration of Department of Home Affairs legacy applications and other brand new technologies.
The ID card will be one of the products of the recently launched Home Affairs National Identification System (HANIS) project, steered by the MarPless Consortium, who in turn subcontracted the system integration role to Unisys Africa.
"Although the manual part of the ID processing workflow will still be the same, the automated processing and issuing process will be greatly speeded up," says Tony Volker, project director at Unisys Africa.
"The primary role of HANIS is to identify South African citizens and prevent fraud on all levels, in the public and private commercial sectors," says Fumihiko Tsuru, manager IT & project director for HANIS at MarPless. "However, the project will soon be rolled out into other areas such as the issuing of a new national ID card."
When fully operational, HANIS will become one of the largest civilian fingerprint databases in the world and the new ID card subsystem will be based on integrated chip technology. "Unisys will be responsible for integrating the subsystem into the HANIS mainstream once a supplier has been selected," adds Volker. "On seeing the specification of what had to be integrated to make the project work, many people thought it could not be done," Volker says. "Many of the legacy systems, such as the government`s population registry, were not designed or built in the era of system interoperability, which created a massive technological task for our team."
HANIS consists of an automated fingerprint identification subsystem [AFIS], a card production subsystem and an interface to the existing Department of Home Affairs central registry. The card production system is subject to a separate tender, which will be issued shortly. "Unisys is responsible for the design, development, integration and implementation of HANIS," says Tsuru.
"The fingerprint subsystem is supplied by NEC - another member of the MarPless consortium, with Unisys engineers handling the systems integration," says Tsuru. Unisys developed, built and implemented four other subsystems, and managed their subsequent integration into the overall HANIS operation.
In preparing for the integration process, Unisys had to analyse the government department`s manual business processes and from that create the system architecture that is now being introduced. "A modular approach was adopted to ensure a robust, redundant design that would ensure maximum uptime to meet HANIS`s high-volume transaction requirements," says Volker.
"Specific modules of the system demanded both tried and tested technology, as well as reliable suppliers and subcontractors. This was achieved through an intensive technology evaluation process and a comprehensive requirements definition phase."
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