Woe with Home Affairs system

2008-08-27 21:17

Michael Hamlyn

Cape Town - Parliament's committee on home affairs has arranged a meeting with the auditor general to get to the bottom of the problems swirling around the department's new identification system - "Who am I online".

Members of the committee want to explain their anxieties about the tender process to the auditor, who has been asked by Minister for Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa Nqakula to investigate.

The tender process began in March 2006, launched by the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) and several local and international companies responded. In September 2006, Sita's supplier selection authority recommended GijimaAst as the successful bidder for the R2bn plus contract.

But the final award was delayed for 12 months, at least partly because Mapisa-Nqakula appointed a multiparty task team to review the department's IT projects and operations.

The task team presented its report and recommendation to the minister and Parliament, and was followed by the appointment by cabinet of Mavuso Msimang as the new director general of home affairs May 2007. Msimang used to be the chief at Sita.

'Who am I online?' is a single citizen-centred project and will focus on the registration of the South African population, including the administration and management of life events of citizens. The project is said to be vital to monitoring the comings and goings of foreign visitors, specifically during major international events.

The project will be a technologically advanced system that will provide immigration officials, the police, national health and emergency services, transportation and revenue services, among others, with a single view of information for every person that enters and leaves the country.

In addition to their concern about the tenders, members of the committee are disturbed by what they see as the doubling of the cost of the system. Nonhlanhla Nkabinde, home affairs spokesperson for the opposition United Democratic Movement, said on Wednesday that R4bn for the project is "unacceptable".

She said she was disturbed to hear that the report on the awarding of tenders was in limbo because the Sita chief executive has resigned.

"It is clear that somebody is failing his/her duties and this cannot be tolerated," Nkabinde said.

"How can the figure have risen so abnormally, whilst those responsible cannot account for the initial awarding of contracts?

- I-Net Bridge (News24)