The Department of Home Affairs has made significant strides in eliminating service downtime and operational hours lost at front offices across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to DHA Minister Leon Schreiber, system upgrades and modernisation efforts at the department since 2024 have more than halved the hours lost due to downtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In FY 2024\/25, 35,261 hours were lost due to system downtime. This was reduced by 62% in 2025\/26, where 13,497 hours were lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Downtime related to the National Population Register (NPR) has also been reduced by 22%, from 14,720 hours in 2024\/25 to 11,479 hours in 2025\/26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schreiber noted that the hours lost are not counted as service hours lost across the complete transaction path when dealing with Home Affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, they are recorded as cumulative hours lost across different systems. For instance, if two systems are down simultaneously, each would add to the total, even though they occur at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They also include partial interruptions where some services remain available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, he said that the total provides an important indication of the impact of service disruptions at an office level across all provinces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The minister added that the DHA is implementing an end-to-end service-observability capability to measure service availability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This would track service functionality across networks, infrastructure, applications, integrations and citizen-facing channels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“This will enable accurate reporting of service availability, incident duration, affected offices and the underlying causes of downtime,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using the data at hand, however, Schreiber pointed out a clear improvement in system uptime, evident in positive movement across all nine provinces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regarding the NPR, six provinces recorded reductions in NPR-related hours, while KwaZulu-Natal, North West and Northern Cape recorded increases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“These figures are being used to target interventions, but differences in the number of offices, local infrastructure and reporting practices mean that they should not yet be regarded as a definitive comparative measure of provincial service availability,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since taking office in 2024, Schreiber has spearheaded a concerted push to digitalise Home Affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This included implementing network upgrades and digital partnerships with South Africa’s major banks\u2014projects that had stalled for years under the previous administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The minister pointed out the key upgrades that had taken place since the current administration took over, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Network upgrades<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Application modernisation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A total of 182 offices were migrated from the legacy desktop client to Service Manager Web, with the remaining offices being fast-tracked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n HANIS, AIX and Live Capture redundancy are also being strengthened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Infrastructure and disaster recovery<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Forty-eight core application servers were replaced, backup and digitisation storage capacity was increased, and the biometric verification facility\u2019s power supply problem was resolved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Primary and secondary replicated environments are being established at SITA and SARS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monitoring and observability<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n SCOM, Grafana and SIEM capabilities have been introduced, with network monitoring and end-to-end service observability under implementation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biometric platform resilience <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A structured Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS)-to-Home Affairs National Identification System (HANIS) migration programme has been established. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As of May 2026, 439 offices were classified as operating on HANIS in South Africa, while phased migration planning was underway for the remaining 121 ABIS-dependent offices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SITA improvements<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n SITA has upgraded its internal core network and is modernising its data-centre facilities to reduce the number of points of failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Department of Home Affairs has made significant strides in eliminating service downtime and operational hours lost at front offices across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":859255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"failed","_sma_x_autopost_error":"Instagram publishing failed: Instagram returned HTTP 400: Media ID is not available","_sma_x_post_id":"2087456820549845098","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2173860533434346","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[3346,2524,20612],"class_list":["post-869867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-downtime","tag-home-affairs","tag-leon-schreiber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":869881,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869867\/revisions\/869881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Province<\/th> System hours lost
2024\/25<\/th>System hours lost
2025\/26<\/th>Change<\/th> NPR hours lost
2024\/25<\/th>NPR hours lost
2025\/26<\/th>Change<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> Eastern Cape<\/td> 4,939<\/td> 1,809<\/td> -63%<\/mark><\/td> 3,080<\/td> 1,028<\/td> -67%<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> Free State<\/td> 2,294<\/td> 477<\/td> -79%<\/mark><\/td> 1,550<\/td> 78<\/td> -95%<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> Gauteng<\/td> 6,788<\/td> 2,296<\/td> -66%<\/mark><\/td> 1,119<\/td> 977<\/td> -13%<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> KwaZulu-Natal<\/td> 5,988<\/td> 2,291<\/td> -62%<\/mark><\/td> 238<\/td> 2,101<\/td> +783%<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> Limpopo<\/td> 2,492<\/td> 1,431<\/td> -43%<\/mark><\/td> 4,287<\/td> 3,707<\/td> -14%<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> Mpumalanga<\/td> 4,151<\/td> 1,336<\/td> -68%<\/mark><\/td> 2,028<\/td> 1,112<\/td> -45%<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> North-West<\/td> 4,161<\/td> 2,460<\/td> -41%<\/mark><\/td> 1,239<\/td> 1,562<\/td> +26%<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> Northern Cape<\/td> 1,382<\/td> 666<\/td> -52%<\/mark><\/td> 630<\/td> 688<\/td> +9%<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> Western Cape<\/td> 2,066<\/td> 731<\/td> -65%<\/mark><\/td> 549<\/td> 226<\/td> -59%<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> Total<\/strong><\/td> 35,261<\/strong><\/td> 13,497<\/strong><\/td> -62%<\/strong><\/mark><\/td> 14,720<\/strong><\/td> 11,479<\/strong><\/td> -22%<\/strong><\/mark><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Upgrades to Home Affairs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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