Home Affairs Responds to Service Downtime
The Department of Home Affairs is adamant that the fact its services were down across the country earlier this month was out of its control.
Speaking during an interview on SAfm‚ acting director-general Thulani Mavuso said there was nothing wrong with their systems – but that power failure at the site where the server is hosted was at the heart of the problem.
“We need Sita (State Information Technology Agency) to start up on their side‚ so that when they get the power our systems can be powered up. That’s the only thing‚” Mavuso said.
“It’s not a question of whether the Home Affairs systems are broken or the application is faulty. Nothing is faulty about that.”
He said he was waiting for a technical report to be handed over‚ which would hopefully indicate when services would be fully restored. He would also be conducting an oversight visit to the Sita site.
Earlier this month, the government tweeted that the failure was due to a massive power supply outage at Sita.
@GovernmentZA tweeted: “Department of Home Affairs is experiencing system downtime due to power supply outage at SITA which has affected all offices across the country. Offices are unable to render all services. All Birth‚ Marriages‚ Death‚ Smart ID and Passport services are affected.”
It added: “SITA and the Department of Home Affairs technicians are investigating the problem‚ and clients will be updated on when services will be restored. Home Affairs apologises for the inconvenience caused to all its clients.”
Mavuso said Home Affairs had wanted to move away from Sita for the last couple of years.
“Let’s host our system in a different environment‚ because these outages and infrastructure maintenance has always been a challenge to us.”
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Sources: Nico Gous via Times Live [1], [2]. Image sources: [1], [2].
