What is wrong at home affairs?

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Zellephant

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I’m hoping maybe someone from the IT fields can explain what the problem at home affairs is?

As a laymen, it makes absolutely no sense to me why everything you apply for needs to take 3-6months minimum.

I understand a waiting period for a passport or ID card, that needs to be manufactured, but most other things are just printouts, and it’s not as if they do any sort of biometric verification etc when you apply for things like unabridged copies of birth/death/marriage certificates.

Why can’t they punch your info from the form into the computer, charge your the prescribed fee and print the document out while you wait, like the licensing department does when you register a car or renew a license?

What systems issues require them to have you wait 6 months for a printout of data that’s already captured in their systems?
 
Zellephant said:
I’m hoping maybe someone from the IT fields can explain what the problem at home affairs is?

As a laymen, it makes absolutely no sense to me why everything you apply for needs to take 3-6months minimum.

I understand a waiting period for a passport or ID card, that needs to be manufactured, but most other things are just printouts, and it’s not as if they do any sort of biometric verification etc when you apply for things like unabridged copies of birth/death/marriage certificates.
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In my recent experience passports and ID documents are super quick these days (a week's turnaround). But these are new documents so there is no need to find anything. I think the problem with stuff like birth certificates is that they are not computerised so I imagine the original documents have to be pulled out of storage.
 
Cray said:
In my recent experience passports and ID documents are super quick these days (a week's turnaround). But these are new documents so there is no need to find anything. I think the problem with stuff like birth certificates is that they are not computerised so I imagine the original documents have to be pulled out of storage.
Click to expand...

Yep, and also why a Police Clearance Certificate also takes 6-8 weeks: someone has to sit there and VISUALLY compare the fingerprints on your application form with whatever.

FFS, this is so easily solvable: get every matric to do a 1-yr civil duty internship, where they sit in DHA/SAPS/Hospitals and do data entry/scan docs.

Solves the immediate unemployment issue for matrics: they get paid a salary for 1 yr + get some work experience, and whoever wants to stay in civil service has a leg up.
 
What I don’t get is why it can take 1-years to get your SA passport when applying to an overseas embassy.

(Apparently this is going to be fixed soon)
 
cguy said:
What I don’t get is why it can take 1-years to get your SA passport when applying to an overseas embassy.
(Apparently this is going to be fixed soon)
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Yeah, it's because all these docs have to be sent in a diplomatic bag. So all the applications probably sit there until they have enough numbers to justify a bag, then only does it get sent to ZA, and vice-versa.
 
Zellephant said:
I’m hoping maybe someone from the IT fields can explain what the problem at home affairs is?

As a laymen, it makes absolutely no sense to me why everything you apply for needs to take 3-6months minimum.

I understand a waiting period for a passport or ID card, that needs to be manufactured, but most other things are just printouts, and it’s not as if they do any sort of biometric verification etc when you apply for things like unabridged copies of birth/death/marriage certificates.

Why can’t they punch your info from the form into the computer, charge your the prescribed fee and print the document out while you wait, like the licensing department does when you register a car or renew a license?

What systems issues require them to have you wait 6 months for a printout of data that’s already captured in their systems?
Click to expand...
Normally they can do just that. It depends what type of document did you apply for and how long ago was it. It Birth Certificates 40 years ago is generally in a file in Pretoria and not on a system like documents from 10 years ago. They are busy digitizing them but basically over 100 years or records for about 60 million plus people take quite a bit of time.
 
Ask for a vault copy and they have to find the physical document easily from 30-40 years ago as organized by people with no proper filing experience.

At our company we started filing which section, which shelfing unit and on which shelf, which box, and which page. We are still busy digitizing documents and have 20 people doing it and its taken them 6 years already. So if you wanted to find out where your items was before we would have to find all the documents in the various boxes to hand it to you.
 
Zellephant said:
I’m hoping maybe someone from the IT fields can explain what the problem at home affairs is?

As a laymen, it makes absolutely no sense to me why everything you apply for needs to take 3-6months minimum.

I understand a waiting period for a passport or ID card, that needs to be manufactured, but most other things are just printouts, and it’s not as if they do any sort of biometric verification etc when you apply for things like unabridged copies of birth/death/marriage certificates.

Why can’t they punch your info from the form into the computer, charge your the prescribed fee and print the document out while you wait, like the licensing department does when you register a car or renew a license?

What systems issues require them to have you wait 6 months for a printout of data that’s already captured in their systems?
Click to expand...
It's your local branch that sucks.

For my last passport I applied on a Tuesday, and I had the passport in hand on the Friday. For ID card, I went back on my emails now to check, and my ID was ready in 3 days as well. Applied on the 3rd, ready for collection on the 6th.
 
Cray said:
In my recent experience passports and ID documents are super quick these days (a week's turnaround). But these are new documents so there is no need to find anything. I think the problem with stuff like birth certificates is that they are not computerised so I imagine the original documents have to be pulled out of storage.
Click to expand...
I’m not talking about passports and IDs. I know these are super quick. My last passport took 3 days.

I’m talking about the “certificates” they issue that are just basic printouts - why does it take months? And no, I don’t buy the story about it needing to be physically located, that is vault copies, and I kind of understand that can take a while.

You can get an abridged birth/death/marriage certificate printed out on the spot. That data is drawn from the same source as the data that is on the unabridged version of that same document, so would have been captured on the system at the same time. So what is the 3-6 month waiting period for?

My daughter is 6 years old. Her birth was registered long after digitising became a thing. I can get a copy of her abridged birth certificate as a walk in on the same day at home affairs, but for the unabridged version, I need to wait 3 months, exactly the same time as I have to wait for my unabridged birth certificate. So the “it needs to be found in a box somewhere” story doesn’t fly here.


notayoba said:
It's your local branch that sucks.

For my last passport I applied on a Tuesday, and I had the passport in hand on the Friday. For ID card, I went back on my emails now to check, and my ID was ready in 3 days as well. Applied on the 3rd, ready for collection on the 6th.
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Nope. It’s not, it’s your reading comprehension. I was specifically referring the the documents they issue that are simply computer print outs.
 
Raphael123 said:
Thought that new Minister was streamlining this process.
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Yes, so he says. But my question is, what is the process that he apparently needs to streamline? Some are saying it’s because the stuff isn’t digitised yet, but that’s obviously not the real story, and only applies to vault copy applications.

If the data is on the system for them to issue a printout of the abridged version of a certificate, it goes without saying that information has already been digitised from the original registration form. So what/where in their system is the hold up, meaning that a home affairs branch can’t access and print the unabridged certificate on the spot?
 
Depends how old the documents are.

I had to get a copy of my son’s birth certificate — born in 2022 — and only had to wait an hour I think due to queues.
 
4 months now for the card ID. And then the audacity that i have to come in and redo everything, including paying again. NO reason for the problem. just come redo.
 
Zellephant said:
I’m hoping maybe someone from the IT fields can explain what the problem at home affairs is?

As a laymen, it makes absolutely no sense to me why everything you apply for needs to take 3-6months minimum.

I understand a waiting period for a passport or ID card, that needs to be manufactured, but most other things are just printouts, and it’s not as if they do any sort of biometric verification etc when you apply for things like unabridged copies of birth/death/marriage certificates.

Why can’t they punch your info from the form into the computer, charge your the prescribed fee and print the document out while you wait, like the licensing department does when you register a car or renew a license?

What systems issues require them to have you wait 6 months for a printout of data that’s already captured in their systems?
Click to expand...

They probably running on Microsoft D00S
 
Just went through my mails to remind myself how long unabridged birth certs and vault copies took through an expedited service. Under a week.
Proves that you can speed up the wheels of inefficiency with a bit of grease.
 
This may be part of the problem:

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber says outdated systems, power supply challenges, and delayed infrastructure upgrades are behind the system downtime at his department’s offices.

“One of the fundamental problems is something as elementary as bandwidth. We’re sitting with offices that have 2Mbps lines in the year 2024.”

mybroadband.co.za

The system is down — Behind Home Affairs’ IT downtime problem

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said several factors are causing the department’s offices to experience system downtime. These include outdated systems and delayed maintenance.
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za

Naks said:
FFS, this is so easily solvable: get every matric to do a 1-yr civil duty internship, where they sit in DHA/SAPS/Hospitals and do data entry/scan docs.

Solves the immediate unemployment issue for matrics: they get paid a salary for 1 yr + get some work experience, and whoever wants to stay in civil service has a leg up.
Click to expand...

There is a historical precedent that shows this is not a good idea. Some National Servicemen who were unfit for combat duty were sent to the Chief Paymaster in Pretoria as clerks. The reason for the long delay in resolving pay queries was only found when the lift refused to go to the bottom floor. The clerks had been filing all the pay queries in the lift shaft so that they could goof off.

The other precedent involves a tender to digitise all of parliament's records. This was done. After the fire that destroyed the originals, it was discovered that only one side of each page had been scanned. So half the parliamentary records of South Africa have been lost forever.

Raphael123 said:
Thought that new Minister was streamlining this process.
Click to expand...

He has been in his post for a year. He has a severely neglected department, both in terms of personnel and infrastructure, which needs to be rectified using very slow state procurement processes.
 
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