JUST IN: South Africa To Digitise 350m Civic Paper—-South Africa will digitise 350 million civic paper records relating to birth, marriages, deaths, and amendments to ensure safe storage.
Minister of Home Affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi who made the announcement on Thursday at a news conference, said the project would run over a three-year period starting in November.
“The department has more than 350 million civic paper records relating to birth, marriages, deaths and amendments.
“The category of records dates back to 1895 which necessitated care and reliable systems that will bear tolerance for digitisation purposes,“he said.
“It must be noted that the department is increasingly using technology to improve the way it renders services to the people and to improve the security of our documents,’’ said Motsoaledi.
He said the ministry would recruit 10,000 qualified unemployed graduates in information technology, information and records management to assist in digitising their system.
Motsoaledi explained that it used to take a long time to manually process unabridged birth and marriage certificates and other documents through 350 million documents.
“Once the records are digitised, home affairs officials will have access to them at a click of a button and would be able to finalise the applications instantly.
“This will obviate people having to come to the office on multiple occasions,’’ he said.
