The Department of Transport seeks a turnkey solution for personalisation of smart driving licence cards. (Image source: 123RF)
The ICT industry is favoured with a broad range of requests on National Treasury’s eTenders Portal this week. Nevertheless, all eyes will be on a tender from the Department of Transport’s Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA) for a turnkey solution for personalisation of smart driving licence cards in South Africa.
The tender follows last month’s ruling from the North Gauteng High Court Pretoria that the original award to French firm IDEMIA, was irregular, invalid, unlawful and unenforceable. The court set aside the tender and ordered the department to re-advertise the tender within 30 days. In the meantime, the department was allowed to outsource the printing and issuing of driving licence cards to the Department of Home Affairs.
In the latest tender documentation, the DLCA refers to the court order and notes the requirement to re-advertise, going on to explain it is looking for a turnkey solution that includes supply, installation and maintenance of a centralised driving licence card personalisation production equipment capability, with related infrastructure, software and providing of polycarbonate blank smart cards to be used for the production of smart driving licence cards.
South Africa’s driving licence card printing process has undergone numerous, high-profile challenges in recent years, including a number of lengthy breakdowns of the printing equipment, which saw issuing backlogs hit the headlines.
The DLCA says the current driving licence card and supporting infrastructure, which was introduced in 1998, is no longer efficient and must be replaced.
“The DLCA currently produces and delivers an average of 2.5 million driving licence cards annually. Using a centralised production model, enrolment data is collected through enrolment units and produced in-house at the DLCA card production facility. The production process includes verification of data, personalisation, quality control and packaging of cards produced,” it says.
The turnkey solution configuration should include, as a minimum, the following sub-system capabilities:
1. Queue manager, database server and interface capability: This should be able to receive smart driving licence card applications from external enrolment organisations and process applications in a suitable file format for transfer to the P-ICC personalisation sub-system.
2. Personalisation sub-system: This will receive production orders from the queue manager server, for execution by the P-ICC personalisation production process.
3. Quality control capability: This will be a manual quality check process function executed by the DLCA quality workers to check personalised P-ICCs at a rate of 1% of the production run.
4. Packaging and shipping capability: This will be responsible for the reception of completed personalised P-ICCs from the production sub-system for the purpose of packaging and shipment according to client service requirements.
5. Card disposal capability: This will be responsible for the reception and record-keeping of rejected cards for the purpose of the destruction of the rejected P-ICCs according to best practices.
6. Blank smart cards supply capability: This revolves around the supply capability of pre-printed polycarbonate smart cards used as input material in the production of the smart driving licence card.
The DLCA will hold a compulsory briefing at the SITA auditorium on 19 February. Submission closes on 20 March.
Other tenders that make this week’s top 10:
- The Limpopo Department of Education is advertising for security operations centre (SOC) as a service. The department explains it has identified a growing need for enhanced cyber security measures due to increasing threats and regulatory requirements. It adds it currently lacks a centralised system to monitor, detect and respond to security incidents effectively.
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The Eastern Cape Department of Social Development wishes to appoint a service provider to be a co-source partner in the development and implementation of a business continuity management system and resilience programme. This is required to improve preparedness in ensuring continuity of operations, availability or critical resources, minimisation of interruptions to business processes and full recovery of business infrastructure and applications in the event of a disaster.
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The Department of Tourism requires professional services for enhancements, support and maintenance of the knowledge portal, website, intranet and other related SharePoint functions. The department explains these applications are developed in SharePoint 2019, with the intranet hosted at Tourism House, Sunnyside, and the website and knowledge portal hosted at SITA Cloud.
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The Department of Transport wishes to appoint a panel of service providers and consultants to conduct specialised forensic investigation. It notes its forensic investigation directorate receives allegations which require specialised skills and expertise, including digital forensics, e-discovery, lifestyle audit tools, data analytics, cyber security and computer imaging skills.
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KwaZulu-Natal’s eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality is calling for the supply, installation and maintenance of network cabling. This will include, among others, the installation of new CommScope Cat 6 network points; run, install single mode fibre between floors and buildings; install cabinet along with accessories; repair network points Cat 5 or Cat 6; supply equipment; and create new routes for cabling where such routes do not exist or are full.
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The National Health Laboratory Service wishes to procure ECM OpenText software licence maintenance, including service and technical support, in an existing private local cloud-based model. The organisation explains the solution has played a key role in automating business processes across departments, such as HR, finance, supply chain and laboratory services, contributing significantly to the organisation’s digital transformation.
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The City of Cape Town requires supply, delivery, installation and maintenance of existing “extreme equipment” (data centre equipment, LAN equipment and WiFi solution) and its related software to run, maintain and optimise this existing system. The request also includes the supply, delivery, installation and maintenance of “new LAN equipment and WiFi solution, and related software to run, maintain and optimise the new solution and electrical components.
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The State Information Technology Agency is looking for information on an animal health management information system (AHMIS) and implementation, maintenance and support services for the Department of Defence. This system will replace the current manual paper-based system used by the South African Military Health Services. This follows an inspection by the South African Veterinary Council which highlighted the urgent need for a robust record-keeping system with cross-referencing capabilities. Such a system is essential for maintaining accurate drug control records and patient documentation – key components of good animal health practices, the agency says.
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Eskom closes the issue with request for information on CORE’s reporting tool for tracking savings and revenue enhancements across the business. The purpose of the request is to understand solutions capable of supporting the tracking, aggregation and reporting of cost optimisation, revenue enhancement and other efficiency initiatives across multiple business units and functional areas within Eskom, it says.
Department of Education, Limpopo
The department is looking for provision of an SOC as a service for 36 months.
Note: This bid is opened to service providers listed on the SITA contract 1183 Limpopo province as per SITA enlargement model only.
Tender no: LDE/B09/2025/26RE
Information: GSS Mabunda, Tel: 015-290-7670, E-mail: MabundaGSS@edu.limpopo.gov.za
Closing date: 3 March 2026
Tags: software, security, security operations centre, SOC, services, managed services
Department of Social Development, Eastern Cape
The coastal department wishes to appoint a service provider to be a co-source partner in the development and implementation of a business continuity management system and resilience programme.
Compulsory briefing: 17 February
Tender no: SCMU4-25/26-0026
Information: Veliswa Matha, Tel: 064-608-2853, E-mail: veliswa.matha@ecdsd.gov.za
Closing date: 17 March 2026
Tags: business continuity, software, security, services, consulting, professional services
Department of Tourism
Microsoft SharePoint application maintenance and support is sought in line with SITA transversal contract 1183 for 14 months.
Tender no: NDT0002/26
Information: Nice Baloi, Tel: 012-444-6744, E-mail: nbaloi@tourism.gov.za
Closing date: 27 February 2026
Tags: software, services, support and maintenance
Department of Transport
The department wishes to appoint a panel of service provider/consultants to conduct specialised forensic investigation for five years.
Non-compulsory briefing: 13 February – Microsoft Teams, Link
Tender no: DOT/14/2025/ODG
Information: Tyron Mkhari, Tel: 012-309-3011, E-mail: Mkharit@dot.gov.za
Closing date: 27 February 2026
Tags: services, consulting, professional services, digital forensics, cybersecurity
Driving Licence Card Account
The DLCA is calling for bids on the provision of a turnkey solution for personalisation of smart driving licence cards in South Africa.
Compulsory briefing: 19 February
Tender no: DLCA/2025/03
Information: Lucky Mashile, Tel: 012-347-2522, E-mail: pmo@dlca.gov.za
Closing date: 20 March 2026
Tags: hardware, software, smart cards, personalisation
eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality
The KwaZulu-Natal metro is calling for the supply, installation and maintenance of network cabling for 36 months.
Compulsory briefing: 10 February
Tender no: 32092-1i
Information: Technical: Andile Matiwane, Tel: 031-322-9520, 082-385-5782, E-mail: andile.matiwane@durban.gov.za. General: Zukiswa Hlongwane, Tel: 031-322-5214, E-mail: zukiswa.jojisa@durban.gov.za. Ilish Seema, Tel: 012-429-5135, E-mail: ilishs@raf.co.za
Closing date: 6 March 2026
Tags: hardware, networking, services, support and maintenance
National Health Laboratory Service
The NHLS wishes to procure ECM OpenText software licence maintenance, including service and technical support in an existing private local cloud-based model, for five years.
Tender no: RFB147/25/26
Information: Zimasa Makhetha, Tel: 011-386-6203, E-mail: Zimasa.Makhetha@nhls.ac.za
Closing date: 20 February 2026
Tags: software, software licensing, cloud computing, services, support and maintenance
City of Cape Town
The Western Cape metro requires supply, delivery, installation and maintenance of existing “extreme equipment” (data centre equipment, LAN equipment and WiFi solution) and its related software to run, maintain and optimise this existing system. The request also includes the supply, delivery, installation and maintenance of new LAN equipment and WiFi solution, and related software to run, maintain and optimise the new solution and electrical components.
Non-compulsory briefing: 13 February – Microsoft Teams, Meeting ID: 332 424 457 960 93 Passcode: MF9D9ay9
Tender no: 140S/2025/26
Information: Enquiries, E-mail: SCM.Tenders21@capetown.gov.za
Closing date: 4 March 2026
Tags: hardware, networking, local area network, LAN, WiFi, software, services, support and maintenance
State Information Technology Agency
The agency is looking for information on an AHMIS and implementation, maintenance and support services for the South African Military Health Services.
Non-compulsory briefing: 11 February – Microsoft Teams
Tender no: RFI 3207-2025
Information: Nontombi Jantjie, Tel: 012-482-2545, E-mail: Nontombi.jantjie@sita.co.za
Closing date: 27 February 2026
Tags: software, management information service, services, support and maintenance
Eskom
The utility is inviting information on CORE’s reporting tool for tracking savings and revenue enhancements across the business.
Tender no: E2498CXMWP
Information: Percy Mohlabane, Tel: 011-800-2913, E-mail: mohlabkp@eskom.co.za
Closing date: 26 February 2026
Tags: software, reporting
