In January 2008 the National Traffic Information System (eNaTIS) dealt effortlessly with a massive increase in driving licence card renewals and the challenge posed by Eskom’s load-shedding programme. ‘As a result of renewals driving licence card transactions rose by more than 70% during January,’ says Werner Koekemoer, eNaTIS project manager. ‘System performance remained outstanding and the transaction increase has had no detrimental effects on overall efficiency.’

A further challenge came in the form of the unexpected power outages that resulted from Eskom’s load-shedding programme. ‘The eNaTIS national data centre is equipped with comprehensive emergency power infrastructure,’ says Koekemoer. ‘This allowed us to maintain 100% system uptime during business hours, although individual service centres experienced power outages during load-shedding periods.’ 

Driving licence card transactions peaked on 29 January 2008 when 13,050 such transactions were recorded – the highest number for a single day since the inception of the eNaTIS.

A total number of 13,190,971 transactions were recorded during January. This represents a month-on-month increase 26.02% compared to December 2007 (when 10,467,175 transactions were recorded).

The breakdown of the transactions performed during January 2008 is as follows: 67,446 learner’s licence authorisations, 232,122 driving licence card orders, 72,271 vehicle record introductions, 305,699 vehicle registrations and 907,575 vehicle licensing transactions. In addition, 96,788 reports were executed on the system. These reports are utilised for, among others, financial reconciliations and audits.

A total number of 3,972,776 transactions were performed on other computer systems that have interfaces to the eNaTIS (such as those of the South African Police Service, vehicle manufacturers, banks and insurance companies), while users of the eNaTIS application (at registering authorities, testing stations and provincial authorities) performed 9,218,195 transactions.

The Johannesburg service centre once again performed the most transactions (734,094) followed by the City of Cape Town (609,875), Pretoria (577,291), Durban (316,915) and Port Elizabeth (190,374).  

With 258,925 transactions BMW SA was the most active non-governmental entity using a system-to-system interface with the eNaTIS, followed by the Delta Motor Corporation (66,183), Mercedes-Benz SA (63,133), Volkswagen SA (57,442) and Toyota SA (46,259).     

To access a daily breakdown of the transactions performed during January, click here.