Inside South Africa’s most ambitious digitisation project
SOUTH Africa is embarking on one of the most important digital projects the country has seen.
The Home Affairs Ministry seeks to digitise 350 million inactive and active paper records comprising birth, marriage and amendments records.
In doing so, the ministry has called upon the youth of South Africa to form part of the digital workforce that will turn hard-copy print records into an electronic format.
This will probably be one of the most important tech projects undertaken in the country. It will be important for citizens, the youth and the government.
South Africa has a chance to modernise its records and systems.
How South Africa approaches the project can catalyse many other things, among them tech skills development, employment and government efficiency.
At the same time, South Africa could approach the project in a manner that could lead to failure in terms of skills development, employment and government efficiency objectives.
There are signs that the approach might lead to failure to achieve some of the objectives.
One of the requirements of the project is that all the youth applying for the project need a qualification in It-related fields, and that is the first error.
While it’s understandable that part of the process is about enabling unemployed technology graduates to gain work-related experience, there’s the assumption that there are thousands of such graduates.
The truth of the matter is that there are only a few such graduates who are unemployed. It is also unnecessary
to search for only tech graduates for a digitisation project. It would also be ideal for the ministry to consider matriculants with an interest in pursuing a career in the technology space. If not, the ministry will probably have the challenge of not being able to fill the positions.
Ideally, this should be treated as an opportunity to absorb graduates across fields to be trained in the art of digitisation.
The second error is that the graduates are expected to be based in Gauteng or North West.
While it’s understandable that the Home Affairs Ministry’s head office
is in Pretoria, the project presents an opportunity to upskill young people across the country and for the skills to exist across the country.
These are important considerations for the ministry to consider in order to achieve the objectives of enabling tech skills development and employment.
The Aaron Motsoaledi-led ministry should be commended for leading in this regard and initiating such an important project.
However, for the project to achieve the government efficiency objectives, it would require more than just the Home Affairs Ministry.
Ayabonga Cawe, speaking towards the end of his show on Metro FM on Wednesday, highlighted a critical issue.
He mentioned that although the government had been collecting data on its citizens, there was a struggle for the government to access citizens’ data across departments.
Part of the broader point Cawe was making was that the government had a silo approach to data management. What that means is that each department has its own database and those are not accessible to other departments. Therefore, when one department sorts out its data-management issues, it does not necessarily mean that other departments will have access to the data.
Part of that has a lot to do with what Motsoaledi’s department is trying to resolve. Citizens' data exists in the form of print copies and it is for this reason that the digitisation project is critical for South Africa.
It will enable ease of access to online records, which is a necessary part of running an efficient government. The project has to go beyond just the Home Affairs Department.
The Health, Safety and Security, Justice, and even the Housing Ministry should also embark on the process.
Motsoaledi’s efforts to digitise will not lead to government efficiency if other arms of the government do not embark on similar digitisation projects.
For the NHI to work, it will require digitised health records. To address failure in safety and security there’s a need to better manage criminal records by digitising them.
In the justice system there’s a need to digitise court records to efficiently deliver justice. South Africa needs to embark on a digitisation project that will move the country from hard-copy records to digitised records.
The Home Affairs project should be treated as just the beginning of a digitisation revolution in the government.
It is therefore important that Home Affairs get the process right in order for it to be replicated by other government departments.
A successful digitisation project at Home Affairs might lead to a digital South Africa if all young people who are interested are involved, all provinces participate and all government departments embark on a digital revolution to create a digital country.