Speaking at Cards Africa at the MTN Sundome yesterday, government consultant Peter Payne Finlay said the Home Affairs National Identification System (Hanis) is on track and will include an e-purse facility on issue.
The announcement of who clinched the tender for manufacture of the ID smart card will be delayed to February next year. Finlay said this is due to the overwhelming response to the tender application; 60 submissions are currently being sifted though by Home Affairs.
"We are having the whip cracked over us by [President Thabo] Mbeki. He sees this as a priority but the sheer volume is overwhelming," said Finlay.
The smart cards will use fingerprints as a means of identification. Finlay said there are currently 37 million full sets of fingerprints on record, which means 96% of the South African population over 16 years of age is on record.
The Automated Fingerprint Identification System is a priority for Home Affairs at the moment as the department is desperately trying to cut down on welfare fraud.
"Book IDs are so easy to forge, we really need to get this virtually foolproof means of identification up and running. There has been an instance in KwaZulu-Natal of a woman claiming 56 pensions with 56 different ID books."
The smart cards will have the facility to hold immense data. When asked what sort of memory capacity the cards would have, Finaly responded: "If you can give me a 128K card, we`ll take it."
This is despite the proportional rising costs of smart card manufacture as memory increases. Finlay said government would issue the first card free.
Identity verification will be conducted offline through dumb terminals in remote locations and online via network connection in urban areas.
Finlay added that while the identification process will be exclusive to the state, private institutions like banks and insurance companies would have access to verification facilities and data.
He also admitted that there may have to be more than one card issued per citizen to facilitate all the necessary departmental information.
The various government departments have yet to concur on exactly what each requires from the card and how much memory will be needed.
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