Home Affairs reverts to outdated system after company fails to deliver
The project to install an automated biometric identification system dates back to 2017
The international company contracted by the department of home affairs to install an automated biometric identification system (Abis) meant to upgrade its population register system has failed to deliver, much to the disappointment of home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi.
This means the department has had to revert to the outdated home affairs national identification system (Hanis), which it wanted to replace with Abis. Abis was supposed to add facial and eye recognition to the fingerprint and photo identification done via Hanis to minimise fraud and corruption.
The Abis contract was signed with JSE-listed software company EOH in 2017 and Abis was slated to go live in May 2019 and to be fully implemented in March 2021.
Idemia, a subcontractor to EOH subsidiary EOH Mthombo, took over the contract in April 2021 after EOH indicated its inability to deliver on the project. At the time EOH had announced its intention to withdraw from all public sector contracts.
On Tuesday home affairs director-general Tommy Makhode said that so far R14m of the R65m contract with Idemia had been paid. The department’s contract with EOH Mthombo was valued at R477m.
The auditor-general found the tender for Abis was irregular. It appeared EOH was unfairly favoured as it was selected even though it did not meet the bid criteria. In 2019 EOH closed down EOH Mthombo, which was key to dubious public sector contracts.
Home affairs deputy director-general for institutional planning and support Thulani Mavuso briefed parliament’s home affairs committee on Tuesday on the status of the project, noting that Idemia had failed to meet at least five extended deadlines for the various phases of the project from November 2021, when the first phase should have been completed.
He said Idemia had written a letter in April accepting full responsibility for the failure of its system, which led to the department’s decision to switch back to Hanis as the primary database for all transactions.
He said the department had levied penalties for the delay in the project and payment had been withheld. Idemia has disputed the amount levied against it for penalties and the matter is in a dispute resolution process.
Mavuso said discussions between the department and Idemia continued, as they sought agreement on a way forward. Technical teams would meetat the weekend to review the stuck applications and, if successful, the project could move to phase two.
He said in reply to questions by MPs that if the department had not ceded the contract to Idemia, it would have had write off about R100m spent on software.
Motsoaledi said he was disappointed that Idemia, an international company, was having these failures. “The situation we are faced with is completely unacceptable, extremely frustrating and we are despondent about this matter,” he said.
If the department had decided not to use Idemia it would have had to go to the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) and start all over again. As was the case with other departments, it wanted to avoid Sita.
The department had taken a “leap of faith” with Idemia and would now have to decide whether to go back to the beginning. He said he hoped that the weekend meeting would demonstrate a way forward.
Home affairs committee chair Mosa Chabane noted that the committee had been dealing with the issue of the department’s IT infrastructure since 2019.
The committee is to hold a report-back meeting on May 23.