Question NW3971 to the Minister of Transport
06 December 2023 - NW3971
Loate, Mr T to ask the Minister of Transport
(1)Whether the smart enrolment solution that was piloted at the new driving licence testing centres (DLTCs) in Waterfall Park in Midrand and Eco Park in Centurion, had gone live in every province in the Republic as a result of her department successfully having undertaken a significant information and technology overhaul at DLTCs across the Republic to reduce waiting times; if not, why not; if so, what has her department achieved in this regard by the end of October 2023; (2) whether any tender had been awarded for a new driving licence card and printing machine; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details; (3) whether her department had implemented a new service-delivery model that has succeeded in drastically cutting down turnaround times; if not, why not; if so, (a) what are the improvements and (b) on what date did they come into effect; (4) whether she will make a statement on the matter; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details?
Reply:
(1) The Smart Enrolment Solution was indeed piloted at the DLTCs of Waterfall Park and Ecopark. The pilot was a partial proof of concept trial limited only to driving license renewals and excluded new driving license applications as well as Professional Driving Permit (PrDP) applications.
In its 16-month lifespan, the pilot has been very successful, and in total, 108 741 renewals were successfully carried out through the smart enrolment solution at the two centres. Very minimal glitches were experienced in the process and lessons from those glitches were utilised to reinforce the solutions’ resilience and proficiency, ahead of the full-scale roll-out which is now due to commence before the end of the third quarter of the current financial year.
As of 31 October 2023, the Driving Licence Card Account Entity (DLCA) has already commenced with readiness to deploy an additional three hundred (300) Smart Enrolment Units (SEUs) at fifty-five (55) centres around the country. These fifty-five are the first centres earmarked for the first phase of the full expansion of smart enrolment before the end of December 2023. A further nine hundred (900) new SEUs will be deployed in the last quarter of the financial year to bring the total deployment of new SEUs to thousand two hundred (1200) across four hundred and twenty-seven (427) DLTCs nationally. This will translate to an average of forty-seven (47) DLTCs per province.
To answer the question, the smart enrolment solution has not yet been piloted to other provinces for the reasons mentioned above, but the process is well underway to deploy to fifty-five (55) Centres and to expand even further as explained above.
(2) A tender for the purchase of the new Driving License Card printing machine has not been awarded yet. The process of evaluation is still ongoing and projections are that it will be finalised on or before end-December 2023.
Delays in concluding this evaluation process have been occasioned mainly by the complex nature of this bid itself, coupled with the fact that the evaluation criteria also included a compulsory site inspection process as part of due diligence.
(3) As part of the DLCA and RTMC’s integrated response to reduce red tape in the driving license testing and licensing process, there is a multiplicity of interventions that are already being introduced.
From the DLCA side, the four major areas of focus are with respect to the reduction of:
- turnaround times in the duration an applicant spends at the DLTC to apply for or renew a driving license
- turnaround time in the duration it takes for enrollment details from the DLTC to reach DLCA and enable DLCA to commence with the printing process,
- turnaround times in the duration to successfully print, quality assure, and package the driving license card for dispatch back to the DLTC,
- turnaround in the duration to have a printed card dispatched from DLCA and delivered to the DLTCs, thereby enabling the applicant to come and collect it.
Within this integrated business process, the introduction of Smart Enrolment Solution has already assisted with a significant reduction of turnaround time from an estimated thirty (30) minutes which an individual applicant currently takes, to a maximum of twenty (20) minutes which an individual applicant will take under Smart Enrolment Solution.
Also, the fact that the Smart Enrolment Solution operates on a real-time basis, means when an individual applicant enrolls his/her application data at a Centre, the information is immediately transmitted to the National Traffic Information System (NaTIS) in real-time and there is no longer delayed transmission which at times could result in hours or an entire day before the information is received from the DLTC to the DLCA, via the NaTIS system.
Reduction of turn-around times in terms of the other two business process elements will only be fully realised once the new driving license card printing machine has been procured and commissioned. This will see DLCA now able to produce a single driving license card within five (5) working days as opposed to an average of fourteen (14) working days as is currently the case.
(4) The question is in my view widely worded and not specific to a particular aspect to which I need to respond. Suffice it nevertheless to state that the Department has in the past made a statement about SEUs and their progressive rollout throughout the country depending on budget availability. That being said, my replies to the questions above serve as further statements in the above regard.