Home Affairs Cuts System Downtime by 62% as Digital Upgrades Improve Services

According to Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber, the department has reduced system downtime by 62%, with hours lost to system disruptions falling from 35,261 in the 2024/25 financial year to 13,497 in 2025/26.

Downtime specifically linked to the National Population Register (NPR) also declined, falling by 22% from 14,720 hours to 11,479 hours over the same period.

While the figures include cumulative downtime across different systems and can include periods where some services remain operational, the department says they provide an indication of the impact that system disruptions have had on Home Affairs offices across the country.

Western Cape among provinces showing improvement

The Western Cape recorded a 65% reduction in overall system hours lost, falling from 2,066 hours in 2024/25 to 731 hours in 2025/26.

NPR-related downtime in the province also fell by 59%, from 549 hours to 226 hours.

The Free State recorded the largest reduction in overall system downtime, at 79%, while Eastern Cape recorded a 63% reduction.

However, not all provinces experienced improvements in NPR-related downtime. KwaZulu-Natal recorded a significant increase of 783%, while North West increased by 26% and the Northern Cape by 9%.

Schreiber cautioned that differences in the number of Home Affairs offices, local infrastructure and reporting practices mean the provincial figures should not yet be treated as a definitive comparison of service availability.

Home Affairs investing in technology

The department has been rolling out a number of technology and infrastructure upgrades since 2024, including improvements to its network, applications, data infrastructure and monitoring systems.

According to the department, 226 network links have been migrated to fibre, while 12 have been moved to LTE. A further 69 Diginet links are being replaced.

Home Affairs has also migrated 182 offices from its legacy desktop client to Service Manager Web, while upgrades are being made to core application servers and backup systems.

A further focus is improving the resilience of the biometric systems used by Home Affairs.

As of May 2026, 439 Home Affairs offices were operating on HANIS, with phased plans underway to migrate the remaining 121 offices that still depend on the older ABIS system.

The department is also implementing an end-to-end service-observability system that will allow it to track network, infrastructure, applications and citizen-facing services more accurately.

The aim is to identify not only when systems go down, but also how long disruptions last, which offices are affected and what causes the failures.

For South Africans applying for or collecting identity documents, passports and other Home Affairs services, improved system reliability could mean fewer interruptions and less time wasted waiting for services to come back online.

The department's challenge now will be to ensure that these improvements translate into a consistently better experience at Home Affairs offices across the country.