• The Department of Home Affairs has rolled out an upgrade to its digital verification system.
• The system is used by both the public and private sector and would take up to 24 hours to issue responses which were also mostly wrong.
• The upgrades bring the error rate down from 50 percent to below one percent.

South Africa’s digital verification system is a core component of our national security but it has been plagued by problems for years.

As the Department of Home Affairs tells it, users of the system reported a failure rate of up to 50 percent on verifications. The system also took ages to respond – up to 24 hours in some cases – and when responses did arrive, they were often beset by errors requiring time consuming manual verification.

To address this, Home Affairs embarked on an upgrade of this system which it is has now implemented.

Where previously the error rate sat at 50 percent, the upgrades lessen that substantially to below one percent. Responses from the system are also said to be dramatically faster.

“The rollout of a reliable, efficient and secure verification service supports both the public and private sectors to improve service delivery. This marks the most significant upgrade to the Home Affairs verification service since it was launched, and will dramatically reduce waiting times whenever a client needs to verify their identity with the Department to obtain a social grant or open a bank account,” Minister of Home Affairs, Leon Schreiber said on Monday.

“The upgrade is also of immense importance to supporting private sector economic growth. When this vital Home Affairs system is down, slow, or littered with errors, it negatively impacts upon the ability of banks, insurance companies and other financial service providers to verify clients and conduct business,” Schreiber added.

In order to maintain the system, a new set of fees for the verification system has been gazetted. These fees will be targeted at the private sector (as government departments don’t pay for access to the system) and will be the first increase in fees for a decade. The fees aren’t that mad with the gazette (PDF) outlining that each transaction will cost R10 or R5 000 for 5 000 transactions.

“This investment in our population register is not only overdue, but also important for delivering on the vision for digital ID, as outlined by President Cyril Ramaphosa during the State of the Nation Address, as a secure and efficient population register forms the cornerstone of digital ID. The launch of the reformed verification system is further proof of the progress that Home Affairs is making on our journey of digital transformation to deliver dignity for all,” the minister concluded.

Since becoming the Minister of Home Affairs, Schreiber has been pushing the department toward rapid digitalisation. Earlier this year the department launched the Trusted Tour Operator platform to make it easier for large groups of tourists from India and China to visit the country.

There are also plans afoot to make it easier for citizens to engage with Home Affairs online through what government is calling Home Affairs @ home.

While the work being done is encouraging, there is a long road to go still before South Africa’s identification systems are up to snuff.