Page 32 - DPSA - Service Delivery Report

FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
25 YEARS OF FORGING A COMMON IDENTITY
The successful evolution towards a common digital identity system is key to supporting a wide range of government services for citizens and for accelerating development broadly, writes Dr Naledi Pandor.
South Africa is among the many countries on the continent hard at work to develop integrated, secure, digital identification systems. It has not been an easy road to travel. This work started in earnest after the dawn of democracy in 1994. We had inherited a fragmented civil registration system, largely, predicated on a divisive race discourse. It was a discriminatory system designed to systematically deny Africans of citizenship. Only 4.5 million White people in the country had enjoyed access to acceptable levels of civic services.
Value of data
At the inception of democracy our immediate task was to forge a common, non-racial, and non-sexist, national identity in an endeavour to deconstruct the civic divisions and inequalities of our colonial and apartheid past. Accordingly, as one of the landmarks of the democratic era and its transformation agenda, we introduced a common, compulsory identity document for all citizens, irrespective of race, and established a single national Department of Home Affairs.
The ID, popularly known as the green- barcoded ID book, of 1986, was then issued also to the African majority, a right hitherto denied to Africans in the former apartheid-designed homelands. In this manner, we succeeded in providing a common ID for all citizens, and, officially, opened doors for citizens to exercise their rights and to access services, including, registering births, assessing social grants, opening bank
accounts, seeking employment, voting and enrolling at school.
Over the years, we have learned that the full value of data from civil registries comes when they are properly integrated within government systems – for example, with the statistical institutions, population registers, national ID systems, and voter registration systems. It is possible to do this through 21st century Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems drawing on the availability of information and communication technology and innovations linking health records with civil registries.
100% birth registration by 2063
When the birth of a South African is registered, a child’s name and birth date are linked to an identity number and a record is created on the National Population Register (NPR). This gives the child an identity as a citizen, with all constitutional rights and obligations accompanying such status.
The SA Department of Home Affairs seeks to ensure a single entry point into the NPR, at birth. To this end, the law demands that parents register their new-born babies within 30 days of birth. Once a child has a birth certificate, that child can be issued with a passport, and can enjoy access to services offered by other government departments, like Health and Education.
Home Affairs in South Africa entered into a memorandum of understanding with the country’s Health Department with the sole purpose of ensuring births at health facilities are registered. To date, it has connected 391 health facilities in public hospitals. Mothers who give birth in these facilities can now register their children and receive birth certificates before leaving the facility.
Home Affairs South Africa is currently engaged in a pilot to automate registration of births, marriages and deaths. It prints names of parents in their children’s passports, for ease of travel. As part of the CRVS objectives, in the achievement of Agenda 2030, as outlined in the country’s National Development Plan, South Africa is expected to be at 90% on birth registration by 2030 and at 100% in 2063. In the 2018/2019 financial year, the country reached 85.7% on birth registration.
Modernisation
As with other organisations, the department’s policies and priorities have evolved over the years. Systems that were considered to be state of the art during the 1990s had proved inadequate to meet the ever- changing needs of the department. Accordingly, in 2011, Home Affairs SA initiated a system-wide modernisation programme. Since then, it has made tremendous progress in creating a responsible, credible, digital, paperless and reliable identification system, along similar lines to those now agreed by ID4Africa.
In July 2013, the green ID book, which was manual and paper-based, and thus open to manipulation, was replaced with a new, smart ID card, which is very secure. The smart ID card is an end-to-end process which is wholly automated. It is supported by a live capture system. Of the 412 Home Affairs offices in the country, 193 are modernised and can thus process the new smart ID cards and machine-readable passports. It has a readable and verifiable card-chip and embedded biographic data. More than 13 million smart ID cards have been issued in the quest to replace about 38 million green-barcoded ID books.
30 SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW | Volume 12 No.3 of 2019