Home Affairs promises less downtime and shorter queues — but questions remain

On Tuesday, Home Affairs announced a reinvigorated role for State Information Technology (Sita) and revealed plans to do away with downtimes — system outages, essentially — that trigger the long queues associated with the department that is responsible for citizens’ official documentation from cradle to grave.

It’s something that should have snagged the attention of every lawmaker, given that as recently as three months ago, Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi was fairly scathing about Sita. 

Little if anything had been done to modernise unstable IT systems and only the first steps towards an appointment system have been taken, according to the Parliamentary Monitoring Group records of that 31 August 2021 meeting.

On 11 June 2021, in the Home Affairs budget debate in the National Council of Provinces, the minister described the hit-or-miss IT at the department’s frontline offices as “original sin”, and indicated that steps were under way to ditch Sita.

“The original sin is the IT system,” said Motsoaledi at the time. “Why SARS doesn’t have systems down — we have actually analysed it — is because it has been exempted from getting these services through Sita and we are working with (National) Treasury to do that.”

By Tuesday, 30 November, Sita was front and centre in the process of rolling out the IT network, including switching offices from copper cables and Diginet to at least LTE technology, if not fibre, monitoring downtimes and reducing the impact on internet services such as card payments. 

Home Affairs Director-General Tommy Makhode told MPs that Sita had been able to make an initial R3-billion to R4-billion investment, but that more funds would ultimately be required. 

It might be that the Home Affairs Sita toenadering is part of bigger reforms. Both agency Executive Caretaker Luvuyo Keyise and acting Communications Director-General Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani spoke of a government-wide integrated broadband network — or, in official speak, “an all-government plan”.

“We will be going to Cabinet shortly to talk about that and the financial implications, so these things will be done as soon as possible,” said Keyise, who had told MPs “there’s no longer a fight” between the agency and department.

Meanwhile, Jordan-Dyani spoke of SA Connect which had, in a pilot,  connected just below 1,000 sites, with further plans to expand connectivity to townships and rural areas. “We are finalising it,” she said.

MPs welcomed the progress made, but questioned the apparent change of heart about Sita and the troubled start to the migration to a single modernised ID system for citizens, from cradle to grave, across government departments and the private sector.

That’s even though the Home Affairs DG Makhode told MPs “all’s on track” for the first phase of Abis (Automated Biometric Identity System) to be complete by late December 2021. While Abis would ultimately replace Hanis (Home Affairs National Identity System), the two systems would have to run in tandem for about a year.

The move to Abis was not without ructions. The initial R409-million contract with EOH was struck by delays, the Auditor-General flagged it — and Home Affairs took action.

Queues at the Roodepoort Home Affairs office on 22 December 2020. (Photo: Gallo Images / Fani Mahuntsi)