The Department of Home Affairs is facing mounting pressure over a stalled self-service kiosk project that saw R27.3 million spent on 91 units, which remain largely undeployed due to integration failures, a terminated contractor, and no clear timeline for rollout.
The Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs convened on Tuesday for a virtual meeting to consider and adopt the department’s Annual Performance Plan ahead of Friday’s budget vote debate.
The session also heard a briefing on the kiosk rollout and received correspondence regarding the long-awaited interim report from the Ministerial Review Committee on the Government Printing Works, which report the committee noted had still not materialised.
R27m kiosks gather dust as integration collapses
The committee heard from Leon du Preez, acting chief information officer at the department, that the kiosk project was initially conceived as part of a broader multi-channel strategy to improve service delivery in underserved and historically disadvantaged communities.
The department had placed an order for 91 kiosks and related software on 29 September 2023, following the signing of a contract with a service provider on 10 March 2023.
President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled a prototype in Mokopane on 7 May 2024.
However, the integration of the kiosks into the department’s Live Capture system and the National Population Register ultimately collapsed.
The integration service provider submitted a work order valued at R11 million but failed to deliver.
Du Preez told the committee the department had no choice but to terminate that contract on 12 March 2025.
“The delays have predominantly been attributed to the third party,” Du Preez said.
He added that payment devices specified in the original tender had also become incompatible with newer solutions introduced in the interim, requiring workarounds.
The department had subsequently considered a proposal from the original kiosk design-and-build contractor to handle integration at a cost of just over R8 million, but this was rejected because that company was not an integration partner and the scope change would have altered the original contract terms.
Home Affairs faces pressure
Du Preez further explained that the department had been operating under severe financial pressure, projecting a significant budget shortfall at the end of the 2024-25 financial year, and had been forced to prioritise restoring systems stability over new deployments.
“We had to look at ways to reduce our cost structure. We had to look at ways to increase our self-funding,” he said, pointing to the department’s online verification and batch services as mechanisms to fund future interventions.
The committee was told that a feasibility assessment is now underway to determine whether the kiosks should be integrated and deployed or whether alternative channels, including the current bank-branch model, which the department said comes at no cost, should take precedence.
MPs question procurement process and accountability
Committee members were unsparing in their criticism.
IFP MP Busaphi Machi asked what consequence management processes had been initiated following integration failures and the contractor termination.
She also challenged the department on what measures had been put in place to prevent the kiosks from becoming fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Furthermore, Machi questioned what due diligence and technology risk assessments had been conducted before procurement to ensure long-term compatibility.
Meanwhile, Adrian Roos from the DA drew broader comparisons to a pattern of failed government ICT projects.
“There’s the procurement issue, as well as the specification issue. If we have these systems that are brought online and then they are unable to integrate into the systems of Home Affairs, then you wonder how does the tender spec go out for products. Is the tender spec written to get a certain service provider in to match their product, or is the tender spec written to match the requirements of the department?” he said.
He echoed concerns about accountability, noting that the amount spent on 91 kiosks was significant and that the department appeared to have little to show for it.
“There must be consequences for the service providers and the officials within the department that allowed this to happen,” Roos said.
ANC MP Molebobeng Modise raised questions about the timing of the project’s difficulties, suggesting the challenges appeared to coincide with a change in leadership at the department.
“It cannot be that all these issues are becoming a challenge now that we have a new administration,” she said.
She also questioned why maintenance costs and integration challenges had not been factored in from the outset.
‘Something is not adding up’
MK party MP, Sihle Ngubane, said the sequence of events did not make sense.
“We would want to know: when was that incompatibility picked up? When the tender went out, didn’t all those things affect early upfront in the advertisement and specification requirements? You can’t have a project advertise, pay, and roll out the project, and all of a sudden you picked up that there are so many things that are not working,” he said.
Ngubane called for a full account of who authorised the cancellation and how much had been paid out at each stage.
He added that consequence management had to follow. “Heads are not even rolling for those monies that are fruitless and wasteful expenditure.”
‘IT things are never as easy as they are made out to be’
The department’s chief financial officer, Gordon Hollamby, confirmed that the department had since initiated engagements between the original kiosk supplier and new service providers to explore what integration would require.
He acknowledged having been told the integration would be straightforward, but that it was measured in his assessment.
“Whether it’s easy or not, that I’m not really in a position to comment on. I was told that it’s easy, but I’ve also learned that IT things are never as easy as they are made out to be.”
The chairperson, Steve Chabane, noted a tension between the CFO’s update and Du Preez’s presentation, suggesting the two accounts did not fully align.
He directed that the committee be provided with a formal report on the new integration developments at its next meeting.
Du Preez, responding to the CFO’s comments, said the feasibility assessment process encompassed the very engagements the CFO had described.
He also pushed back against the suggestion that integration could be handled internally. “If we could integrate our ecosystem with all our systems with our internal resources, we would not have contracted an integration partner. We’ve been contracting integration partners since 2010.”
