SA Home Affairs is Going Paperless
South African Department of Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba says the department will be moving to paperless applications for birth, marriage, and death registrations, as well as the printing of parents’ details on their children’s passports.
“This is another way of ‘meeting the future’, by rising to opportunities created by technological advancements for maximising client satisfaction,” Gigaba said.
Addressing the media in Pretoria on Wednesday, Gigaba said the Department of Home Affairs has reached another milestone in rolling-out its flagship programme of modernisation, which began in 2010.
“This system upgrade is a part of ongoing enhancements of the live-capture system to improve service quality by modernising processes.”
Gigaba explained that the end-product will be the automation of the way Home Affairs offices capture birth registration and issue certificates for births, marriages and deaths.
“Documents will now be saved electronically and be easily retrieved upon request, as opposed to the old paper-based legacy system,” he said.
Modernised offices to be affected by system upgrade
The live-capture system upgrade is scheduled to start on Friday, 13 July 2018. On this day, modernised offices, which are offices that accept smart ID card applications, will be unable to receive applications for IDs and passports, from 2pm to enable system back-up.
However, offices will attend to people whose applications are already being processed.
During the implementation of this upgrade, services for smart ID cards and passports will not be available in the 184 modernised offices, including at the department’s eHomeAffairs partners in the banking sector, with the exception of large offices.
All other services will be available, except for smart ID cards and passports.
The system upgrade entails minimal interruptions in the provision of ID and passport services between 13 July (from 2pm) and 20 July (until 4pm), with provinces affected at different times and to different degrees.
During the system upgrade period, Gigaba advised clients needing ID and passport-related services to visit large offices in their provinces, as these will be fully operational.
According to Gigaba, large offices would have been attended to on Sunday 15 July 2018, with no impact on services.
Work in the Gauteng province will also be carried out over the weekend of 14 – 15 July 2018, which means no office in Gauteng will experience disruption.
System upgrade phases
System upgrade: Phase 1
• Birth registration for children 0 to one year will be automated, meaning that clients will no longer complete paper forms for birth registration. This will be more convenient for clients, and will reduce opportunities for corruption and fraud.
• Marriages and deaths: This entails reprints of marriages and death certificates for clients that are already registered in the national population register (without filling paper forms).
• Printing of parents’ details in passports: Once Home Affairs has completed the upgrade and fully implemented in identified offices, the details of parents will be printed in the children’s passports. In this way, the department will have delivered also on the earlier Cabinet concession of easing travel with children.
Schedule of Implementation
Monday, 16 to Tuesday 17 July: Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal & participating banks.
Wednesday 18 to Thursday 19 July: Limpopo, North West & Eastern Cape.
Friday 20 July: Mpumalanga, Free State & Northern Cape.
Further details of subsequent phases will be announced in due course.
Sources: SA Government News Agency [1]. Image sources: [2].
