| Speech |
Keynote Address by Mr. Malusi Gigaba
MP, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, at the Cards for Africa Conference at
the Sandton Convention Centre
|
26 Ocotber 2005.
It is a great pleasure to join with you this morning
at this important Conference and to have the special privilege to address
this august assembly as you deliberate on matters which are so vital to
the future of our economy, our country and people.
None can dare dispute that
in today’s world driven by the knowledge economy, there is a close, direct
and dynamic relationship between technological development, economic
growth and poverty eradication.
Indeed, our socio-economic progress as a nation
depends on what we do today to master the forces of technology, in order
successfully to enable our country and continent as a whole to become full
players and occupy their rightful positions in the global economy.
In his book, The End of Poverty: how can we make it happen in our
lifetime”, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs argued that: “The combination of new
industrial technologies, coal power, and market forces created the
Industrial Revolution”.
Furthermore, he says: “I believe that the single most
important reason why prosperity spread [in many parts of the world], and
why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the
ideas underlying them. Even more important than having specific resources
in the ground, such as coal, was the ability to use modern, science-based
ideas to organise production”.
The fact is that technology has played a catalytic
role in the advancement of human society and the enhancement of life, and
is radically changing the way we do things and view our future. Yet
another sad fact, however, is also that prosperity, technology and ideas
have, as a result of the progression of history, and in spite of their
sheer abundance, been impounded by a few countries and used to enrich
these few.
Consequently,
whereas there exists today sufficient resources, knowledge and technology
totally to be able to wipe out global poverty and underdevelopment, both
global poverty and underdevelopment have continued to grow and to expand,
while the social, economic and digital divide have continued to deepen.
The truth is that Africa
has not benefited from this ICT and economic revolution, but instead her
marginalisation has been deepened. The vital question that we have to
answer is how all this abundant prosperity, technology and ideas can be
utilised to resolve the most urgent problems facing humanity… to spread
them to developing countries and the poor so that they too can share in
economic growth and so that development can be sustainable!
In a speech made in Tshwane
in 2000, President Mbeki made the same remark when he urged that:
“Technological and scientific advancement must belong to all the people of
South Africa, so that they use it to face the every-day challenges of our
world and also prepare them for the encounters that lie ahead”. In
addition to being vital for economic growth and sustainable development,
our government views technology as a tool to enhance the livelihoods of
our people, to ensure that government is able to boost service delivery so
that citizens have easier and more convenient access to government and
private sector services.
To achieve all these goals, it goes without saying
that the government and the private sector must forge a partnership to
master and use modern technologies in order to modernise our economy and
the social lives of our people. Given both these challenges as well as the
central role the Department of Home Affairs plays to provide citizens with
the services that would, in turn, enable them to access public and private
sector services, we conceptualised the Home Affairs National
Identification System (HANIS) project in 1996, then envisioned as the
biometric database for citizens.
Later, it was decided that the HANIS scope be
increased to include non-citizens. This would make it an integrated
biometric database of all people the Department deals with, incorporating
our Population Register, Movement Control System, Visa System, Refugees
and illegal foreigners’ database.
Thus the main elements of the HANIS Re-loaded would
be the fingerprint biometric database (AFIS), system integration, and the
smart ID card; the former two of which have been achieved, with only the
latter outstanding.
It
is crucial to emphasise here that HANIS does not amount only to the smart
ID card, but the totality of the elements we have mentioned above.
The vital challenge for our
Department is to be able both to identify and verify the identities of the
citizens as well as to provide integrated government services utilising
the advantages of modern technologies.
In a world where identity and citizenship has become
not only a matter for right of access to socio-economic and political
benefits, but is also a matter of urgent national security, we have the
obligation to ensure that our systems are not only modern, but secure and
have high integrity, and enhance the safety and security of our
citizens.
Clearly, the modernisation of our systems must have
in mind the rapid integration of the SADC region and the African continent
as a result of equally rapid movement of the people across borders and the
challenges that this will bring along with it.
Given South Africa’s relative economic and ICT
strength both in the SADC region and the continent at large, it stands to
reason that the infrastructure we are going to establish for our purposes
will soon have to be utilised to achieve similar levels of modernisation
beyond our borders, creating great and fascinating opportunities for
investment and cooperation.
To implement the HANIS project, the Department of
Home Affairs would need to establish a basic technology infrastructure
which would entail the full digitisation and automation both of our
internal business processes and systems as well as all our offices at home
and abroad and the upgrading of our current infrastructure to ensure full
connectivity of all our offices, capable of handling increased data
traffic, including the use of satellite and other communications
technology for remote areas and mobile units.
For HANIS fully to function, we would have to
populate it with the electronic records of all citizens by converting the
paper-based records of citizens that lie in our archives in order to
enable the on-line verification of all our citizens’ identities and
dramatically improve our ability to detect duplicate identities and
attempts fraudulently to gain citizenship.
Thus far, having already commenced with this
back-record conversion project early this year, we are certain that we are
on course to complete this project by September 2006.
A great and perhaps the most
awaited element of this project is the smart ID card project which should
replace the current green bar-coded ID book, which would address, inter
alia, the challenge that the current ID document is not as ideally secure
and is not always considered as an irrefutable proof of identification.
The new smart ID card
would have the advantage to provide the unique smart card technology base
for use by government departments to enhance the delivery of services and
provide an enabling platform that will form the basis for the successful
implementation of electronic government.>
In this way therefore, it would have
multi-application functions, allowing for greater service delivery
convenience to citizens.
In taking this route, South Africa would join an
increasing list of countries that already utilise and are fast turning
towards the highly effective, inter-operable and multi-applicable smart
card technology both for identification and service delivery such as
Malaysia, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Macau and others, driven towards
smart card solutions by the growing global concern for security,
technological advancements and e-government, to ensure that citizens have
easier and more convenient access to government and private sector
services.
The smart ID
card will contain demographic information, a photograph on its surface as
well as fingerprint biometric verification capabilities on the chip.The
information found on the surface of the card will also be encoded into the
chip.In terms of ID functionality, the smart ID card will provide
fingerprint biometric verification that will be readily available for use
throughout the country and will contain digital signatures that will allow
citizens and residents to conduct online transactions with both Government
and private sector.
The
attractiveness of the smart ID card lies in the fact that it provides for
both static and dynamic data. Certain information on the card can be
changed without the need to issue another card. It provides a secure
platform on which to store and process information.
The smart ID card will
drastically reduce ID related fraud in the country and throughout the
entire African continent, and ultimately prove convenient for the banking
sector itself.
The
outstanding challenge with the smart ID card currently is governance
issues because it would impact on many state institutions which still have
to decide their own participation procedure.
It goes without saying that such a bold direction as
we are taking within the government as a whole and the Department of Home
Affairs in particular shall contribute towards the revolutionisation of
our technology infrastructure and shall require that the rest of the
country both invests in ICT skills development as well as in their
retention within the country.
The rapid use of modern technologies by government
and in view of the progress we are making with regard to the HANIS
project, we have begun to take the steps to make the Department of Home
Affairs the model-user of ICT solutions, certain that we are going to
succeed in this endeavour.
Finally, I am privileged to have been invited to
address this important Conference, and to wish you success in your
deliberations and resolutions.
Thank you.
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Released by The Ministry Of Home
Affairs
Enquiries: Media enquiry can be directed
to: Communication (012) 810 8613 |
26/10/2005 | |
