The Department of Home Affairs will spend another R1 billion over the next three years on its information systems modernisation programme.
The project, which started in 2008, aims to replace the department's outdated and obsolete legacy systems, as well as improve security. The project kicked off again in the financial year that is drawing to a close.
Home affairs' "Who am I Online" project stalled in May 2010, after a dispute between the department and service provider Gijima. The dispute was resolved in January 2011, costing Gijima R374 million, and home affairs paid out R835 million to own hardware instead of leasing the equipment.
The project will provide an integrated IT platform to decrease the turnaround time for issuing identity documents; birth, death and marriage certificates; passports and visas; section 22 asylum permits; refugee identity documents; citizenship certificates; and permanent and temporary residence permits.
The system supports transactional processing and simultaneously provides information that includes photographs, fingerprints, signatures, voice recordings, demographic information and scanned supporting documents.
The department has made R1.1 billion available over the medium-term to complete the project by 2014/15. Some R1.4 billion was spent between 2008/09 and 2011/12, including R835 million for the settlement agreement.
Several aspects are due to be completed over the medium-term, including live capture functionality for identity documents and passports; the cleaning of the national population register; core systems integration of civics and immigration; the upgrading of the visa and permitting system; and the rollout of the movement control system to 38 remaining ports of entry, 34 of which were rolled out in 2010 in preparation for the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
According to National Treasury, the project has already led to substantial reductions in the time required to produce official documents. The Estimates of National Expenditure indicates that in the new financial year, home affairs aims to issue 95% of the projected 651 577 machine-readable passports for manual processes within 24 working days.
It also aims to issue 97% of the projected 434 385 machine-readable passports for live capture processes within 13 working days, and 95% of the projected 1.1 million first issue identity documents within 54 working days.
In 2011/12, more than two million identity documents were issued within 54 days.
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