The plant renders a bureau service to all licensing authorities, on behalf of the Department of Transport, for the manufacturing and personalisation of driving licence cards for South Africa.

The Department of Transport has signed the contract for the manufacturing of driving licences with FACE Technologies (Pty) Ltd on Friday 28 February 1997. This concluded a preparatory process that started on 5 September 1996 when the State Tender Board awarded the contract to FACE Technologies, an Ariel Technologies company, IDMATICS, a subsidiary of Thomson-CSF and NKOBI Holdings.

It was decided to pursue a joint venture operation. The strategy was to offer internationally recognised state of the art technology on the one hand, whilst ensuring on the other hand that a sustainable local operations and support infrastructure exist. The project will also make a marked contribution to the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP).

The above mentioned strategy resulted in a new joint venture company Prodiba (Pty) Ltd being formed. The shareholders are FACE Technologies, Thomson-CSF (SA), who represents IDMATICS, and Kobitech (Pty) Ltd representing NKOBI Holdings, an emerging company committed to infrastructure and industrial development.

Approximately 50 people will eventually be appointed to run the operation. A project team of 15 people from all three partners completed phase one – the establishment of a card manufacturing facility. The new card facility uses IDMATICS technology that has been successfully implemented elsewhere in the world in countries such as the USA, France, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Peru, and Kenya. For the supply of card materials, IDMATICS works together with Agfa. The technology is not readily available and is of high integrity. To date there is no record of successful forgeries.

Carefully considered strategies are offered to achieve the goals of the RDP with specific emphasis on realising an integrated and sustainable programme. Central to all the RDP strategies offered in this proposal, is the notion of empowerment of previously marginalised individuals and groups. This is achieved primarily by promoting ownership, employment and human resource development. Kobitech will play a major role in this regard.

The project comprises a central bureau service that provides for a card production facility for the personalisation of cards. Twelve months were allowed for the implementation and preparation of the card production facility, after which the contract runs for a five-year period. After lapse of the five-year period, the Department of Transport reserves the option to extend the contract for another 5-year period or to procure the facility executing this contract.

Mr Schabir Shaik has been appointed as non-executive chairman, whilst Danie Bisschoff from FACE Technologies is the Managing Director. Johan Vorster from FACE Technologies has been appointed as the Bureau Manager.

The end user of the product is any person who is licensed to drive a vehicle, either professionally or not, in South Africa. The customers of the bureau are the licensing authorities in all nine provinces. There is no competition for this service, although several consortiums competed with Prodiba during the tender phase.

The primary product is the South African driving licence card. We also supply the ISS (Image Scanning Sheet) forms that are being used by licensing authorities to capture the photograph, signature and fingerprints of an applicant. Furthermore, we supply the card reading devices to be used by law enforcement officers to verify the information contained in the two dimensional barcode. Lastly, we supply fingerprint pads used to capture the fingerprints on the ISS.

1. When an applicant becomes eligible (either by a first or additional application or through renewal of an existing licence) for a driving licence, he completes a form DL1 at the licensing authority that is used to update the NaTIS (National Traffic Information system). He also completes an ISS form containing a photograph, two fingerprints and a signature of the individual.
2. The DL1 form is used to update the NaTIS. On this form, the IHN (Image Handle Number) of the ISS form is filled in by the licence official. This number is used to link the ISS form later with the details of the individual. The issuing of a licence card is authorised on the NaTIS once the applicant has paid for his licence.
3. The ISS form is sent either by post or courier service, to the card bureau.
4. Upon receipt of the ISS form, the card bureau performs a physical quality check on the form to ensure that all images are present and of acceptable quality. If not, the ISS form is rejected and returned to the applicable licensing authority.
5. The ISS form is sent to the image-scanning department where all images are digitally scanned and stored on the computer system.
6. After scanning the images, a second automated quality control check is done. If the quality check is not positive, the ISS form is returned to the licensing authority and no card is produced
7. If the quality check is positive, the fingerprint minutiae are extracted to enable the verification of fingerprints against a reference fingerprint (if any).
8. The NaTIS system sends a card production order to the card bureau once the applicant has paid his licence card fee.
9. If necessary, fingerprint verification is done automatically to ensure the same person will receive the duplicate or renewed card.
10. If the automatic fingerprint verification is negative, a fingerprint expert does a manual verification.
11. If the manual fingerprint verification is also negative, a card is not produced and the information is passed on the SAPS for investigation.
12. If the fingerprint verification is positive, the ISS record is placed in the next available queue for production on the CPF (Card Production Facility).
13. After production, a quality check is performed on the card. Rejected cards are re-manufactured in a next batch.
14. The cards are sorted by licensing authority and packed, together with a NCD (Notice to Collect Document).
15. The cards are delivered, either by mail or courier, to the licensing authority from where the ISS were generated.
16. The licensing authority sends out the post card portion of the NCD to the driver to inform the driver to collect the licence card.
17. The driver collects the card from the licensing authority.

The technology used to transfer the personalised information onto the card is a patented, very unique process called DTR (Data Transfer Reversal). IDMATICS holds patent rights on this technology. This technology makes it very difficult to counterfeit or forge the finished product. The special paper is manufactured and prepared in Europe from where it is imported.

The same technology can also be utilised to manufacture driving licence cards for all SADC (Southern African Development Community) countries. The high security environment and the card technology could also be utilised to manufacture other security cards, such as national identification cards.

Once the facility is fully operational, and if spare capacity permits, the services of Prodiba could also be offered to other African countries.