The rejuvenation of Home Affairs is top of new minister Leon Schreiber’s agenda – and digitisation will be key to this.
“I believe that if we can demonstrate that even a department as maligned as Home Affairs can work and even thrive,” he says. “And the key to making that happen lies in embracing digital transformation.”
Schreiber adds that a long process of neglect and corruption has hollowed out public institution, but there have been pockets of excellence. “There have been people inside these organisations who protected what they could; who kept trying to innovate under conditions of either malign destruction, or benign neglect.
“Can you imagine what it must be like to be an honest, dedicated Home Affairs official in a situation where your clients stand outside in the rain or heat for six hours, only for you to have to tell them that the system is offline once they reach the front of the queue?
“In addition to being an enormous waste of resources, it is also profoundly disrespectful to treat human talent and potential in this way.
“And it is precisely out of my respect for the human beings inside this organisation, that we must urgently embrace technological solutions,” he says.
One of the core issues facing Home Affairs is the fact that it only has 40% of the staff required to function optimally. Employing more people is not affordable, so increasing efficiency has to be the solution.
“Luckily, in the great age of machine learning, artificial intelligence and the fourth industrial revolution, we have all the tools we need right at our fingertips,” Schreiber says. “All that is required, is vision, leadership, and a true and sincere commitment to reform.”
To this end, the seventh administration is embarking on a path of reform, to make institutions like Home Affairs better than they were before.
“I am not interested in defining the vision for the future of this Department according to the standards that existed at Home Affairs before 29 May 2024,” Schreiber says. “I believe we can emulate the benchmark set by excellent government institutions in South Africa, like the Reserve Bank and the Revenue Service.
“Indeed, my vision is even more bold – some would say brazen – than that: I want Home Affairs to become the best at what it does in the entire world.”
The sceptical might scoff, because Home Affairs still issues paper-based, hand- written visas. It is often offline, with long queues and many opportunities for corruption.
“But it is precisely because this is our starting point that I take pride in saying that what we at #TeamHomeAffairs aim to achieve over the next few months and years, is the most daringly ambitious vision South Africa has seen in a generation,” Schreiber says.
“Our vision is to take an antiquated, paper-based, manual, vulnerable and demoralised organisation, and turn it into a modern, user-friendly, automated, secure, world-class and – most importantly – proud institution that delivers dignity to all.”
At the heart of turning this vision into a reality, will be an end-to-end digital platform that processes all applications, adjudications and communications between the people of South Africa and their Home Affairs department.
“The result of building this platform will ensure that every function that Home Affairs provides becomes available online to every citizen through a secure portal, similar to the online banking portals that have become ubiquitous in our society.
“Through the simple use of existing facial and fingerprint recognition tools, including the Face ID and fingerprint functions we all use every day on smartphones, we can create a secure profile for every citizen and every person wishing to visit South Africa,” he adds.
“Firstly, if we get this right, it would eliminate the need for anyone to physically visit a Home Affairs office for routine transactions.
“In turn, this would transform the working environment of our staff by enabling them to not only do their existing jobs well, but to also engage in far more interesting and productive tasks,” Schrieber envisions.
“This would include devoting our staff to serving those who truly need it most, including the poorest members of our society, people in rural areas, the 10% of South Africans who don’t yet use smart devices, and those exceptional or complicated cases that require more resources to resolve.”
He says the system will allow for applications to be submitted online, with a risk engine built on machine learning technology checking that the application is complete, verifying the authenticity of the user, analysing supporting documents for fraud, running facial recognition on uploaded photos and cross-referencing with various databases, processing cashless transactions and – in the case of a legitimate application – communicating the outcome to the user.
“All of this would happen within a matter of seconds. No more standing in queues, no more waiting months of years for an outcome, no more being kept in the dark about the status of an application, and no more space for officials or syndicates to solicit bribes for a transaction to be processed.”
Once this is in place, Schreiber says there is no logical reason why IDs and passports cannot be delivered to the door of the applicant anywhere in the world. “Exactly like we already do in the banking sector with debit and credit cards.”
The same goes for attracting skills, capital and tourism. For instance, tourists could receive a digital bar-coded visa in both PDF form and in their smartphone wallet within seconds of submitting a legitimate application. When they arrive in South Africa, their full would be captured at the airport within seconds to enable a track-and-trace system from the time they enter to the time they depart.
“In fact, it is only through the total digital transformation of Home Affairs that we can win the war on corruption in this sector,” Schreiber adds.
“Our vision for Home Affairs is both revolutionary – and just plain common sense. And the best part is that we already have an example of how this could work,” he says. “The end-to-end digital platform I just described to you already exists at a very special institution in South Africa – the South African Revenue Service.
“This means that we have an inspiring example right here in South Africa from which we can learn, and with whom we wish to collaborate.”
Schrieber adds that a reformed Department of Home Affairs would secure our national sovereignty by restoring the integrity of our population register and bullet-proofing our civics and immigration systems against corruption.
“It would deliver dignity to all citizens and redefine government as we know it, by offering the same security and convenience we today associate with online banking. And, most importantly, it would turn Home Affairs into the most powerful economic enabler in the entire South Africa.”
National Treasury has already found that, after eliminating load shedding, attracting critical skills to our country is the second most powerful step we can take to create jobs, Schreiber points out. Research has also demonstrated that attracting about eleven thousand more highly skilled individuals to work in our companies every year, would boost GDP growth by up to 1,2% and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
Similarly, growing tourism by just 10% would add 0.6% to annual GDP growth and create tens of thousands more jobs.
“This means that transforming Home Affairs into a digital-first organisation that restores national security while attracting skills, capital and tourism can single-handedly triple South Africa’s annual economic growth rate from the paltry 0,6% we currently experience.
