Digital IDs President Cyril Ramaposa has said that South African citizens are going to play an important role in the government’s efforts to re -discove him through digital services.
In the state’s speech to Parliament on Thursday, the state of the state said that the digitalization of government services was important to its “reform age”.
This initiative includes investing in the next generation of businesses, eradicating economic growth, eradicating manual systems in various organs of the state, and improvement of government services through digital channels.
“We will invest in digital public infrastructure to provide access to government services through the re -launched Gov.za site,” Ramaposa said at his address. “The implementation of the digital identification system at the center of this change. These actions… will create a government that can be accessed in a touch of each person.”
These sound like high ambitions, but South Africa will not be the first government to digitize its services in this way – and there are plenty of lessons from other countries.
Digital identity is the digital representation of a citizen’s personal information, including their identity number. Digital identities can be created by many data points, including biometric data, usernames and passwords, identity numbers, driver’s licenses and birth dates. These include account information (profiles and attached accounts) and device information (device IDs and IP addresses).
Example of esstonia
By having a safe digital identity, citizens can access the services quickly and easily if they can check themselves. In most cases, verification is carried out using biometric tools such as fingerprint reader or facial recognition technology. This eliminates the need to carry body IDs, which are expensive to create and vulnerable to loss or theft.
In countries where digital identities are already common, they need to scan the finger on the biometric reader to confirm their details, including having a valid driving license for a driver on a roadblock. Similarly, applications for government jobs or other social services do not need to be with certified copies of IDs.
Read: South Africa has more work in creating digital IDs
Countries that led to the sorting of national digital identity systems have found benefits, including performance and cost savings. One step Article On the Global Government Forum website, Estonia has a compulsory Digital ID system for over 20 years.
The Estonian Investment Agency, Katrin Waka, the International Public Relations President for Estonia’s Estonia Estonia’s Estonia, said the Digital ID organization “free from bureaucratic” as a community. “
“For me, as someone who grew up in this period of digital change in my own country, I saw how this digital identity system was built, gradually, and everything was done so that every participant in our community would win.
There are benefits that are close to the house. For example, Botswana changed manual systems with biometric additives for pensions and social subsidies. According to a World Bank Briefly In digital identity, the state was found to have a 25% storage to the state by identifying duplicate records and dead beneficiaries. Similar efforts in Nigeria have reduced the federal pension roll by 40%.
Home Minister Leon Shriper welcomed the announcement of Ramaposa’s Sona. In a statement, he said that through digital identities, interior affairs would act as a “linpin for the digital change of the government.”
Plan
Shriper said that there will be interior affairs over the next 12 months:
- Create the first components of Digital ID to eliminate identity fraud, to expand social and financial additives, and to ensure access to everyone in a “touch”;
- Start a Modern Electronic Travel Authorization-Automatically operated by Action Intelligence and Mechanical Learning-Providing Short Term Visas; And
- Implement a reliable tour operator program to increase tourism from the emerging raw markets of China and India.
“Our five -year view to deliver Home affairs @ houseAs announced in September last year, the president’s announcement is built around the digitalization and automation of all services and processes, ”said Shripper. – © 2025 News Central Media
Get braking News from Tech Central on WhatsApp. Register here.
Don’t miss out:
Ramaposa in her 2025 Sona speech is everything about technology
