'Who Am I Online' escalation explained

IT company Gijima says it will bid for the smart ID card contract as the mess with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has not put it off government projects.

CFO Carlos Ferreira says the way the company engages with government is different from the way it would contract with another company, but this is because government has different procedures in place.

“We are certainly not put off government projects. Government is still one of the biggest IT consumers in the country. They're a good customer, generally.”

Gijima and the DHA this week reached a settlement over the contract for the “Who Am I Online” (WAIO) project that will see the overhaul of the department's systems. The project aims to replace outdated and obsolete legacy systems, as well as improve security.

The department cancelled the contract last year and had been in negotiations with Gijima since. The company will now continue work on the project.

Ferreira says Gijima had bid for the smart ID card project, which will replace the traditional green ID books for South African citizens. The smart cards will have embedded microchips, which can be used to secure state pension payouts, with additional uses being considered.

The contract for this project was sent out for tender, but was not awarded as the entire project was put on hold in 2009. The DHA says this is because of the WAIO delay, since the smart card project needed all the new systems to be in place first before it could be worked on.

“We believe we have a solution for the smart ID card and we will bid again,” says Ferreira.

The company is also working on the controversial e-tolling system as a subcontractor of the Electronic Toll Collection consortium, which was granted the contract by the South African National Roads Agency.

Ferreira says Gijima's work on the system is on track and has not been affected by the fee suspension. “We're on track in terms of what we need to do for the go live date in June.”

Gijima has existing projects with government departments and ministries, like the police and the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, and has also acquired new contracts.

The company did R600 million of sales in six months and some of these were government projects, but small ones. Ferreira says none were on the scale of the WAIO project.

The project was cancelled partly due to an escalation of costs from R2.1 billion to R4.5 billion, which the department said was invalid.

Some of the reasons for the escalation of the contract cost were inflation and an increased interest rate.

ITWeb has been told by a reliable source that the bulk of the cost has to do with shared infrastructure. The DHA initially left certain costs out of the contract, because it was going to share infrastructure with the likes of the State IT Agency (SITA), so it wouldn't have to install this for the project.

However, when this plan changed and there was no longer going to be sharing of infrastructure, all the infrastructure costs that had not been taken into account initially now had to be. This resulted in the bulk of the cost escalation of the project.

This cost could subsequently be cut off again, because the South African Revenue Services (SARS) now has systems in place that the project can use and the infrastructure costs can be allayed once more.

Home affairs director-general Mkuseli Apleni says the department saw the value of breaking silos and the importance of working together within government with SARS.

SARS commissioner Oupa Magashula says it is now possible to deliver the contract close to the original cost of R2.1 billion, because the SARS real-time systems are in place.

“This is one of the reasons we are confident we can deliver this contract in its current form with the budget from 2006. We are able to leverage across government.”

One part of the WAIO project was the shared government “middleware”, which was to be provided by SITA. This was the cost that had risen the most from R200 million to R1.6 billion. “We now don't have to spend this R1.6 billion,” says Magashula.

Barry Hore, COO of SARS, explains the similarity between the SARS system and the one the DHA requires.

“It is not hard to imagine that we could allow those who are fortunate enough to have a PC at home to fill in an application for a passport or ID document online, arrive at a home affairs office and then be subjected to the live capture process.”

He explains that live capture refers to the capturing of fingerprints, pictures and signatures online and in real-time that can be kept at the department for record purposes.

“What we discovered at SARS is that not everyone is fortunate enough to have PC at home. We, therefore, put a mechanism in place where you can come to a SARS office, sit across from a consultant and receive assistance. It is, therefore, not too difficult to imagine how we can simply change the forms and adapt this system to the department.”