Question NW507 to the Minister of Home Affairs
29 March 2023 - NW507
Herron, Mr BN to ask the Minister of Home Affairs
In view of the fact that one of the greatest issues plaguing our Home Affairs system are the IT systems which are pivotal to online data capturing and efficiency at branches, what (a)(i) date was the last time that the IT system at Home Affairs branches was upgraded and (ii) did that upgrade/maintenance consist of, (b) quantity of our current documentation in paper format has been transferred into a digital format, (c) security measures have been added to the decaying IT system to ensure the protection of citizens’ personal data/information and (d)(i) are the most recent statistics captured to show the number of times the system goes down at various branches nationwide and (ii) are the most common causes for the system reboots/shut downs?
Reply:
(a)(i) The system for processing of IDs and Passports was upgraded on 03-05 February 2023.
(a)(ii) The release was introducing the web based system for processing of ID Cards and Passports and doing bug fixes.
b) The quantity of documents transferred into digital format is 3 175 442.
c) The Department has implemented the Biometric Access Control Management (BACM) to control access to sensitive transactions and are stored in aforensic vault. The NPR, ABIS and HANIS have several security measures implemented to protect citizen data. These are the main systems that citizen’s data are stored. Regular Vulnerabilities and Penetration tests are performed to identify possible vulnerabilities and fix them. A project has been initiated to review the current enterprise architecture and introduce the necessary improvements.
(d)(i) The downtime stats report from SITA is attached as Annexure A.
(d)(ii) The main cause of system downtime currently, is power failure / load shedding. Whilst there is effort to ensure that generators and UPS are working at the offices during power outages, there are instances where the generators and or UPS are in need of maintenance.
END