Date: 18/05/2005
Source:Ministry of Home Affairs
Title: Gigaba: Home Affairs Dept Budget Vote 2005/2006
Statement by Malusi Gigaba, MP, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, during the Budget Vote 4 debate, Cape Town
Chairperson
The Honourable Minister
Honourable Members
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is now 50 years since the Congress of the People drew the Freedom Charter on the pages of which eternally are etched the cornerstones of our principles of freedom and democracy.
In asserting that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”, the Freedom Charter rejected the principles of exclusion, bigotry and discrimination upon which was founded the system, policy and philosophy of apartheid.
It made the pledge that, “All shall be free to travel without restriction from countryside to town, from province to province, and from South Africa abroad”; and that “Pass laws, permits and all other laws restricting these freedoms shall be abolished”.
We have thus, in the Department, sought to act in a manner consistent with this vision, determined that we should forever banish the dehumanising policies and practices that denied our people their rights and restricted their freedoms.
Chairperson,
Fifty years after the drafting of the Freedom Charter, humankind has made remarkable and inconceivable progress in science and technology, opening up many phenomenal possibilities to make new advances in all fields of human life.
Today, technology has become the main driver of development and progress, resulting in immense changes in the very nature of production and the character of labour itself. The Department of Home Affairs has itself sought to draw on these remarkable achievements to enhance its services, to migrate further and farther away from manual and paper-based service delivery towards a more productive and efficient electronic system.
This, we have hoped, would help us radically to reduce corruption, long queues and inefficiency, whilst it enhances service delivery through means superior than the ones we have hitherto deployed.
In this regard, we are happy to report that HANIS is now proceeding in full steam, that the AFIS and Systems Integration are currently being implemented, with a view to start issuing the first smart-ID card in 2006.
During this financial year, we shall focus on the procurement process of the card and develop a detailed implementation plan. We have budgeted R1.8b over a five-year period for this project.
The smart-ID card will, whilst not at a stroke, address both our security concerns and enhance the vision of integrated governance and e-government.
It will result in technology and skills transfers, investments and economic empowerment, placing South Africa in a leadership position to act as a gateway and catalyst for smart-ID card solutions in Southern Africa and Africa as a whole.
We have thus decided that the greatest amount of work with regard to the smart-ID card shall be done at the Government Printing Works, whilst we shall develop the capacity within the Department to do personalisation.
All the obstacles we faced in the past, especially the lack of adequate capacity and leadership, the low attitude and morale of our information technology (IT) staff, have been and are continuing to be addressed. In this regard:
* the electronification of the citizen’s fingerprints and documents, to enable the implementation of the smart-ID card project is well under way and shall be completed by September 2006;
* we have launched and are ready to begin issuing the Refugee smart-ID card to over 30 000 refugees; and
* an inter-operable e-passport project is in progress, and we hope that we would be able to deliver it within our set deadline,
* we have introduced IT infrastructure upgrade, to introduce live capture at the Refugee Reception Offices and to have integrated and consolidated immigration systems by 2007,
* at Lindela, we have established a live system for the registration of illegal immigrants,
* an electronic tracking and tracing system for all ID and passport applications is soon to be ready, and we are reviewing business processes to achieve this. With regard to the Network and Infrastructure Support Services:
* more than 68 hospitals across the country have been computerised to enable electronic registration of births and deaths and we shall install further hospitals this year
* regional IT managers have been employed and deployed to regions
* 276 out of 350 Department’s offices and service points have been computerised.
We have built a partnership with State Information Technology Agency (SITA) in our quest to build capacity deliver on our mandate.
However, we were still not able to achieve the objective to have Integrated Client Service Consoles (ICSC) because the back record conversion is itself not yet complete.
Chairperson,
We are now close to overcoming the ostensibly intractable problems that over the past years eluded the Film and Publication Board (FPB), in particular gross and adverse leadership deficiency. Decisive steps were taken to address all these problems, filling up the vacancies that existed on the panels of Examiners and Chief Examiners, as well as the Review Board, and we appointed the Chief Executive Officer.
We shall soon announce the Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson of the Board and finalise the governance review of the Board and take appropriate action to address this deficiency, especially at the Executive Committee level.
Together with this, we shall soon finalise a comprehensive turnaround strategy for the FPB for the next five years.
During the previous year, we also intensified the profile of the programme against child pornography and established the child pornography hotline. However, incidents of child pornography continued to rise all over the country.
The Board intends to shift towards more proactive and preventative interventions, so that we can better protect our citizens, especially women and children. In regard to this, we shall from 2 to 3 June, host the National Conference Against Child Pornography, under the theme, Unite Against Child Pornography, hoping that this will provide a platform for united action.
We shall finalise the appointment of a new and broadly-representative Ministerial Advisory Task Team on Child Pornography to replace the incumbent one, with new and broader terms of reference.
In addition to the above plans, we shall, during the 2005/6 financial year, market the FPB and enhance the enforcement of the newly amended law.
Chairperson,
Last year, we sharply raised the challenge of the gross lack of capacity and leadership in the Government Printing Works (GPW). In actual fact, GPW is an archaic organisation that lacks all the essential ingredients of a modern printing company, with poor management and leadership, inadequate skills and infrastructure.
Accordingly, security printing, the core function of the GPW, is not executed to the expected level and GPW is unable to meet deadlines for completion of jobs, resulting in inordinate outsourcing of jobs, poor quality jobs, drastic reduction in clientele, wastage, and others.
Corruption, incompetence and inefficiency are rife and have gone on for far too, with impunity!
As well as the above challenges, GPW is a white-male dominated organisation, 72% of whose staff focuses on administration and not printing, which is its principal mandate.
During the previous financial year, we established the Ministerial Advisory Committee, in terms of the Treasury Regulation 20, and we appointed the new Chief Executive Officer.
We have completed the Business Case for GPW corporatisation, but we are currently doing a high-level investigation of GPW “as-is” to develop deeper insight on this organisation and do a proper scanning of the environment in which it shall operate, so that we can decide on the appropriate final model for its conversion.
Accordingly, we have thus had to delay the finalisation of this process, with the intention to finalise this high-level investigation by the end of May this year, which will enable us to choose the proper model and commence with this process in this year.
An extensive forensic audit has just commenced and shall be completed, at least, by August 2005.
The new CEO shall draw a comprehensive transformation strategy, to ensure that the GPW becomes a sound, viable and vibrant business organisation, with sound management, modern technology and a highly motivated and skilled staff, able to pursue its core mandate and functions.
In addition to this, we shall:
* before the end of the year, engage in a national road-show to raise the profile of GPW and interact with our stakeholders, especially black economic empowerment (BEE) printing players;
* develop plans for the relocation GPW by April 2006 to new and appropriate premises, conducive to maximum security printing and in conditions requisite to support the processes of such scale;
* develop plans for the re-capitalisation of GPW, to replace the dilapidated production equipment, in view of the plans to convert GPW to a viable and modern business organisation, and given the challenges to be posed by the production of the smart-IDs;
* develop and begin to implement a purposeful and concerted human resource development programme, in view of the crucial challenge to modernise and transform this entity;
* develop plans and begin to market GPW, both in South Africa and in Africa, seeking to establish strategic partnerships;
Chairperson,
As promised last year, we successfully launched and started implementing our internship programme.
By now, we have appointed 253 interns and shall soon appoint a further 50 in the National Immigration Branch. Whereas we had pledged that at least 50% of these interns would be female, we are happy to report that thus far 66% of our interns are female.
We have not been able to appoint all the 350 interns, despite the dire need among the youth of our country, precisely because of lack of capacity and experience on the part of the Department, especially in branches and provinces.
The programme to conduct induction for our interns at all levels is underway, addressing legislation, customer care and others to empower them to undertake their tasks better and more confidently. We wish to thank Umsobomvu Youth Fund for its support.
In June 2005, we shall recruit 200 interns with higher education qualifications, and a further 300 youth service participants with only a matric certificate, the latter to be trained in administrative work and customer service so as to enhance service delivery.
To date, we are happy to acknowledge that the recruitment of interns helped radically to improve service delivery, and we thank them for their enthusiasm and commitment.
Chairperson,
Last year, we made the pledge that led by the Minister, we were going to provide hands-on leadership to the Department. Today, we are happy to report that as a result of that effort on our part, remarkable progress has been made to inject the Department of Home Affairs with a new energy and vision.
Accordingly, we can say that Madiba was correct in 1956 to say that “the textbooks of the future would treat the Kliptown meeting as one of the most important landmarks in our history”, and that we must treat the Charter itself as “a revolutionary document precisely because the changes it envisages cannot be won without breaking up the economic and political set-up of present South Africa”.
Today we can attest that this was true, this was true!
I wish to thank the Minister for her wise counsel, the staff of the Ministry and my office in particular, the DG and his entire team, as well as the new CEOs of the FPB and GPW who are present today, the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee and the entire Committee, as well as my family for all their support.
Thank you!
Issued by: Ministry of Home Affairs
18 May 2005
Source:Ministry of Home Affairs
Title: Gigaba: Home Affairs Dept Budget Vote 2005/2006
Statement by Malusi Gigaba, MP, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, during the Budget Vote 4 debate, Cape Town
Chairperson
The Honourable Minister
Honourable Members
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is now 50 years since the Congress of the People drew the Freedom Charter on the pages of which eternally are etched the cornerstones of our principles of freedom and democracy.
In asserting that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”, the Freedom Charter rejected the principles of exclusion, bigotry and discrimination upon which was founded the system, policy and philosophy of apartheid.
It made the pledge that, “All shall be free to travel without restriction from countryside to town, from province to province, and from South Africa abroad”; and that “Pass laws, permits and all other laws restricting these freedoms shall be abolished”.
We have thus, in the Department, sought to act in a manner consistent with this vision, determined that we should forever banish the dehumanising policies and practices that denied our people their rights and restricted their freedoms.
Chairperson,
Fifty years after the drafting of the Freedom Charter, humankind has made remarkable and inconceivable progress in science and technology, opening up many phenomenal possibilities to make new advances in all fields of human life.
Today, technology has become the main driver of development and progress, resulting in immense changes in the very nature of production and the character of labour itself. The Department of Home Affairs has itself sought to draw on these remarkable achievements to enhance its services, to migrate further and farther away from manual and paper-based service delivery towards a more productive and efficient electronic system.
This, we have hoped, would help us radically to reduce corruption, long queues and inefficiency, whilst it enhances service delivery through means superior than the ones we have hitherto deployed.
In this regard, we are happy to report that HANIS is now proceeding in full steam, that the AFIS and Systems Integration are currently being implemented, with a view to start issuing the first smart-ID card in 2006.
During this financial year, we shall focus on the procurement process of the card and develop a detailed implementation plan. We have budgeted R1.8b over a five-year period for this project.
The smart-ID card will, whilst not at a stroke, address both our security concerns and enhance the vision of integrated governance and e-government.
It will result in technology and skills transfers, investments and economic empowerment, placing South Africa in a leadership position to act as a gateway and catalyst for smart-ID card solutions in Southern Africa and Africa as a whole.
We have thus decided that the greatest amount of work with regard to the smart-ID card shall be done at the Government Printing Works, whilst we shall develop the capacity within the Department to do personalisation.
All the obstacles we faced in the past, especially the lack of adequate capacity and leadership, the low attitude and morale of our information technology (IT) staff, have been and are continuing to be addressed. In this regard:
* the electronification of the citizen’s fingerprints and documents, to enable the implementation of the smart-ID card project is well under way and shall be completed by September 2006;
* we have launched and are ready to begin issuing the Refugee smart-ID card to over 30 000 refugees; and
* an inter-operable e-passport project is in progress, and we hope that we would be able to deliver it within our set deadline,
* we have introduced IT infrastructure upgrade, to introduce live capture at the Refugee Reception Offices and to have integrated and consolidated immigration systems by 2007,
* at Lindela, we have established a live system for the registration of illegal immigrants,
* an electronic tracking and tracing system for all ID and passport applications is soon to be ready, and we are reviewing business processes to achieve this. With regard to the Network and Infrastructure Support Services:
* more than 68 hospitals across the country have been computerised to enable electronic registration of births and deaths and we shall install further hospitals this year
* regional IT managers have been employed and deployed to regions
* 276 out of 350 Department’s offices and service points have been computerised.
We have built a partnership with State Information Technology Agency (SITA) in our quest to build capacity deliver on our mandate.
However, we were still not able to achieve the objective to have Integrated Client Service Consoles (ICSC) because the back record conversion is itself not yet complete.
Chairperson,
We are now close to overcoming the ostensibly intractable problems that over the past years eluded the Film and Publication Board (FPB), in particular gross and adverse leadership deficiency. Decisive steps were taken to address all these problems, filling up the vacancies that existed on the panels of Examiners and Chief Examiners, as well as the Review Board, and we appointed the Chief Executive Officer.
We shall soon announce the Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson of the Board and finalise the governance review of the Board and take appropriate action to address this deficiency, especially at the Executive Committee level.
Together with this, we shall soon finalise a comprehensive turnaround strategy for the FPB for the next five years.
During the previous year, we also intensified the profile of the programme against child pornography and established the child pornography hotline. However, incidents of child pornography continued to rise all over the country.
The Board intends to shift towards more proactive and preventative interventions, so that we can better protect our citizens, especially women and children. In regard to this, we shall from 2 to 3 June, host the National Conference Against Child Pornography, under the theme, Unite Against Child Pornography, hoping that this will provide a platform for united action.
We shall finalise the appointment of a new and broadly-representative Ministerial Advisory Task Team on Child Pornography to replace the incumbent one, with new and broader terms of reference.
In addition to the above plans, we shall, during the 2005/6 financial year, market the FPB and enhance the enforcement of the newly amended law.
Chairperson,
Last year, we sharply raised the challenge of the gross lack of capacity and leadership in the Government Printing Works (GPW). In actual fact, GPW is an archaic organisation that lacks all the essential ingredients of a modern printing company, with poor management and leadership, inadequate skills and infrastructure.
Accordingly, security printing, the core function of the GPW, is not executed to the expected level and GPW is unable to meet deadlines for completion of jobs, resulting in inordinate outsourcing of jobs, poor quality jobs, drastic reduction in clientele, wastage, and others.
Corruption, incompetence and inefficiency are rife and have gone on for far too, with impunity!
As well as the above challenges, GPW is a white-male dominated organisation, 72% of whose staff focuses on administration and not printing, which is its principal mandate.
During the previous financial year, we established the Ministerial Advisory Committee, in terms of the Treasury Regulation 20, and we appointed the new Chief Executive Officer.
We have completed the Business Case for GPW corporatisation, but we are currently doing a high-level investigation of GPW “as-is” to develop deeper insight on this organisation and do a proper scanning of the environment in which it shall operate, so that we can decide on the appropriate final model for its conversion.
Accordingly, we have thus had to delay the finalisation of this process, with the intention to finalise this high-level investigation by the end of May this year, which will enable us to choose the proper model and commence with this process in this year.
An extensive forensic audit has just commenced and shall be completed, at least, by August 2005.
The new CEO shall draw a comprehensive transformation strategy, to ensure that the GPW becomes a sound, viable and vibrant business organisation, with sound management, modern technology and a highly motivated and skilled staff, able to pursue its core mandate and functions.
In addition to this, we shall:
* before the end of the year, engage in a national road-show to raise the profile of GPW and interact with our stakeholders, especially black economic empowerment (BEE) printing players;
* develop plans for the relocation GPW by April 2006 to new and appropriate premises, conducive to maximum security printing and in conditions requisite to support the processes of such scale;
* develop plans for the re-capitalisation of GPW, to replace the dilapidated production equipment, in view of the plans to convert GPW to a viable and modern business organisation, and given the challenges to be posed by the production of the smart-IDs;
* develop and begin to implement a purposeful and concerted human resource development programme, in view of the crucial challenge to modernise and transform this entity;
* develop plans and begin to market GPW, both in South Africa and in Africa, seeking to establish strategic partnerships;
Chairperson,
As promised last year, we successfully launched and started implementing our internship programme.
By now, we have appointed 253 interns and shall soon appoint a further 50 in the National Immigration Branch. Whereas we had pledged that at least 50% of these interns would be female, we are happy to report that thus far 66% of our interns are female.
We have not been able to appoint all the 350 interns, despite the dire need among the youth of our country, precisely because of lack of capacity and experience on the part of the Department, especially in branches and provinces.
The programme to conduct induction for our interns at all levels is underway, addressing legislation, customer care and others to empower them to undertake their tasks better and more confidently. We wish to thank Umsobomvu Youth Fund for its support.
In June 2005, we shall recruit 200 interns with higher education qualifications, and a further 300 youth service participants with only a matric certificate, the latter to be trained in administrative work and customer service so as to enhance service delivery.
To date, we are happy to acknowledge that the recruitment of interns helped radically to improve service delivery, and we thank them for their enthusiasm and commitment.
Chairperson,
Last year, we made the pledge that led by the Minister, we were going to provide hands-on leadership to the Department. Today, we are happy to report that as a result of that effort on our part, remarkable progress has been made to inject the Department of Home Affairs with a new energy and vision.
Accordingly, we can say that Madiba was correct in 1956 to say that “the textbooks of the future would treat the Kliptown meeting as one of the most important landmarks in our history”, and that we must treat the Charter itself as “a revolutionary document precisely because the changes it envisages cannot be won without breaking up the economic and political set-up of present South Africa”.
Today we can attest that this was true, this was true!
I wish to thank the Minister for her wise counsel, the staff of the Ministry and my office in particular, the DG and his entire team, as well as the new CEOs of the FPB and GPW who are present today, the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee and the entire Committee, as well as my family for all their support.
Thank you!
Issued by: Ministry of Home Affairs
18 May 2005
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