Briefing to the Transport Portfolio Committee by Jeff Radebe, MP Minister of Transport Parliament, Cape Town

Honourable members

Today I stand before you to address you on the Electronic National Traffic Information System (eNaTIS) by your request. In my briefing, I will address all issues pertaining to the eNaTIS system, concerns around long queues at service centres, vehicle registration queries, licence renewals, learner driver and driver test bookings, and the Auditor-General's report.

Awarding of eNaTIS contract

The tender for the eNaTIS was issued in November 2000 and it was closed in February 2001. It was awarded to Masiye Phambili (Tasima), a consortium consisting of a prime contractor and two BEE contractors in July 2001. Contract RT1194KA was signed on 3 December 2001 with Tasima (Pty) Ltd through a process led by the State Tender Board. This decision to award to Tasima was challenged in the High Court in February 2002 by one of the unsuccessful bidders. The High Court reviewed the tender process and dismissed the application with costs. This is a clear indication that the awarding of the tender was procedural.

Reasons for replacing the old NaTIS with the eNaTIS

The NaTIS system has been in operation for 14 years and could not continue to support the road traffic environment. Coupled with this, ageing technology could not be maintained any further and had become an unmanageable risk. The NaTIS system had become very expensive to maintain and almost impossible to enhance, and thus could not deal with the long queues and average waiting periods of 1 hour or more at service centres.

The eNaTIS provides South Africa with the following immediate advantages:

* centralisation of road traffic management data
* elimination of fragmented small systems
* reduction in queues due to the implementation of online transactions
* improved system security
* lower operating costs of the system
* convenient easy interaction with the system by members of the public
* rapid deployment of new software
* eNaTIS is one of the most advanced Traffic Management Systems in the world; similar systems are found in Europe and in the United State (US) but none have the sophistication of the eNaTIS in respect of Road Transport Management capability
* it interfaces directly with the South African Police Service (SAPS), motor manufacturers, vehicle builders, vehicle importers, investigative agencies, financial institutions, insurance companies
* vehicles are managed on the system from factory floor to scrap yard
* fraudulent introduction of stolen or hijacked vehicles is entirely eliminated
* it is a powerful tool used by the entire motor and financial industry.

Successful migration of data from NaTiS

* 4.6 billion records were migrated to the new system without compromising or damaging any data in the process
* the system was commissioned on 12 April 2007 and apart from slow response on 1 particular transaction (vehicle registration) it has operated in a satisfactory manner thus far
* the system is dependent on sufficient database server capacity; the vehicle population increased by 53% since the issue of the tender and this additional capacity had to be catered for
* when the eNaTIS was deployed on 12 April 2007 the system was overloaded by huge demand for transactions caused by backlogs that were created during the 5 day migration period
* the system had to cope with the usual high demand for transactions and the demand for backlog transactions
* service centres are also reluctant to extend business hours beyond 08h00 am-15h00 to deal with backlog transactions.

Interventions implemented

* database capacity was increased to deal with the artificially high demand for transactions
* specialists including representatives from the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), Oracle, HP were tasked to optimise the system and to ensure immediate system stability even during the high peak periods
* system stability and satisfactory performance was reached by 8 May 2007
* since 8 May the system performed transactions at a rate higher than the previous NaTIS system and no system downtime has been reported except for the 1 hour experienced yesterday due to the power blackout.

Current status

* old NaTIS performed average of 287 000 transactions per day (Mar 2007)
* between 13 April and 7 May eNaTIS performed average 326 000 transactions per day (13,4% more) with 93% uptime
* after interventions (since 8 May 07) eNaTIS performed average 619 000 transactions per day (115% more) with 100% uptime.

Auditor-General's report

A correction needs to be made regarding this report. The report in question relates to the "Information Project Management and Systems Development Life Cycle Controls Surrounding the eNaTIS System." This management report was never issued to the Director-General of Transport. Instead the report that was received by the Director-General in February 2006 relates to the Information System Audit of the Network Security at the Department of Transport on the NaTIS and eNaTIS systems.

Audit processes are governed by a particular process where the findings have to be verified first then disputed or acknowledged before they are contained in a draft report which can be further discussed before a final one is issued. These processes are aimed at protecting the auditor and the auditee. The Office of the Auditor-General delivered the report in question for the first time only on the 22 May 2007 to the office of the Director-General of the Transport Department. The department will study this report in detail and give an appropriate response in due course.

For enquiries, contact:
Collen Msibi
Cell: 082 414 5279

Issued by: Department of Transport
23 May 2007