The Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) Acting Executive Director, Ms Lydia Sebokedi, handed over the award-winning Digital Fingerprint System project to the Gauteng Department of Health (GDoH) at a ceremony held on July 13 in Germiston.
The ceremony was attended by members of the GDoH’s Forensic Pathology Service (FPS), who will be the primary users of the Digital Fingerprint System, as well as the leadership of the government, including the Premier of the Gauteng Provincial Government, Mr Panyaza Lesufi, and Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Health, Ms Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, who received and launched the Digital Fingerprint System on behalf of the GDoH’s FPS.
Officials from the office of the Deputy Minister for Public Service and Administration, Dr Chana Pilane-Majake, who has oversight responsibilities on the work of the CPSI, also attended the event.
The Digital Fingerprint System uses biometric scanners, third-party verification and software developed by Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The CPSI has been nurtured and funded since it emerged and won the Public Service Innovation Award in 2021. Part of the support from the CPSI includes the provision of six laptops and six biometric scanners to enable the replication of this innovative solution. However, the innovation itself goes back to the work that the CSIR had undertaken as far back as 2018 in partnership with Solar Biotech, a South African-based company specialising in using solar energy to power innovative technologies, as is the case with the Digital Fingerprint System.
Described by MEC Nkomo-Ralehoko as a technological milestone, the Digital Fingerprint System seeks to address the perennial delays with the identification of unidentified and unclaimed deceased persons, a challenge faced by the 11 Forensic Pathology Service facilities in Gauteng and other parts of the country.
“The Digital Fingerprint System is an integral part of the transformative vision of the sixth administration, which expresses the desire to digitise the Gauteng Provincial Government,” said MEC Nkomo-Ralehoko.
“Recognising the immense potential of technology as a powerful tool, we have embarked on this ground-breaking undertaking to revolutionise service delivery in forensic pathology as technology is emerging as a driving force that enables us to integrate processes in service provision,” she added.
The Digital Fingerprint System streamlines the identification process for deceased individuals by securely capturing and storing digital fingerprints. This system creates a centralised database for comparisons against systems like the Department of Home Affairs and Credit Bureaus.
According to the Gauteng Forensic Pathology Service Acting CEO, Mr Thembalethu Mpahlaza, the implementation of the Digital Fingerprint System has had a massive impact on the reduction of backlogs in the identification of deceased individuals at five sites in the province. In the first quarter of 2023, said Mr Mpahlaza, the Gauteng Department of Health was sitting with as many as 938 unidentified deceased individuals in their facilities, which had since been reduced to 691 at the time of the official handover of the Digital Fingerprint Innovation system.
A practical demonstration of the system, which Premier Lesufi attended, showed that it takes less than three minutes between taking a fingerprint and identifying an individual, which is extremely fast compared to more traditional identification methods, such as relying on DNA analyses for badly decomposed bodies. Mr Willie Fouche, the Bronkhorstspruit FPS manager, conducted the initial demonstration.
In addition to shortened turnaround times in identifying unidentified deceased people, the rollout of the Digital Fingerprint System ensures that the families of known deceased individuals are not needlessly subjected to the double trauma of having to physically identify their loved ones in a manner that traditional procedures would require of them, according to Mr Mpahlaza.
“Over the past 20 years, the CPSI, through its Annual Public Sector Innovation Awards Programme, has unearthed, recognised, and replicated several innovation projects to improve service delivery. One such project is the Digital Fingerprint Project, recognised and awarded in 2021,” said the CPSI Acting Executive Director, Ms Lydia Sebokedi, during the handover ceremony, expressing hope that the handover will “encourage other provinces to follow suit”.
