eNaTIS: UPDATE AND WAY FORWARD

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• eNaTIS UPDATE AND WAY FORWARD
• RFA CONVENTION 2007
• Champagne Sports Resort,
• Drakensberg, KwaZulu-Natal
• By Mr Thabo Tsholetsane
• Acting CEO RTMC

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Background

• The National Traffic Information System (NaTIS)
  was introduced some 14 years ago in an attempt to
  consolidate the manual (non-computerised) systems
  that was operated in the former four provinces at
  that stage.
• The system was developed on a distributed
  architecture with the system firstly being
  operated on 94 different servers later
  consolidated to 14 different servers.
• The NaTIS was not developed according to industry
  standards and its complex nature made further
  enhancements virtually impossible and extremely
  expensive.

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Need to replace NaTIS

• NaTIS system was in operation for 14 years and
  could not continue to support road traffic
  environment.
• Ageing technology could not be maintained any
  further and had become an unmanageable risk.
• Resources to maintain specific technologies
  contained in the old NaTIS were diminishing
• NaTIS was very expensive to maintain and almost
  impossible to enhance
• NaTIS could not be enhanced to deal with the long
  queues and average waiting periods of 1 hour or
  more at service centers.

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Changing Environment

• Since the issue of the eNaTIS tender in 2001the
  vehicle population increased by 53
• Increase in vehicle population creates additional
  demand for associated transactions to be
  performed on the system at service centers.
• Service centers have not increased in numbers and
  in capacity to deal with the additional demand.

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Benefits of new eNaTIS

• Designed to reduce waiting periods at service
  centres.
• Online transactions will dramatically reduce
  pressure at service centres.
• System lower operating cost.
• New software can be rapidly deployed
• All requirements of the environment can be
  serviced through the system

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Successful Migration

• 4.6 billion records were migrated to the new
  system without compromising or damaging any data
  in the process
• The system was commissioned on 12 April 2007 and
  apart from slow response on 1 particular
  transaction (vehicle registration) it has
  operated in a satisfactory manner thus far.

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Initial Challenges

• The system is dependant on sufficient database
  server capacity. The vehicle population increased
  by 53 since the issue of the tender and this
  additional capacity had to be catered for
• When the eNaTIS was deployed on 12 April 2007 the
  system was overloaded by huge demand for
  transactions caused by backlogs that were created
  during the 5 day migration period
• The system had to cope with the usual high demand
  for transactions and the demand for backlog
  transactions
• Service centers are also reluctant to extend
  business hours beyond 0800 am 1500 pm to deal
  with backlog transactions

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External Factors

• Users were not able to take full advantage of the
  system from the beginning as they were getting
  familiar with the new system
• Data line communication failure occurred such as
  recently experienced at the Langlaagte Service
  Center in Johannesburg during the week of the
  17th May creating further backlogs
• As recent as 22nd May a total power blackout was
  experienced at Midrand, Johannesburg for 5 hours.
  This resulted in 1 hour downtime as the
  technicians implemented emergency backup power.

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Interventions implemented

• Database capacity was increased to deal with the
  artificially high demand for transactions
• Specialists including representatives from the
  State Information Technology Agency (SITA),
  Oracle, HP were tasked to optimise the system and
  to ensure immediate system stability even during
  the high peak periods
• System stability and satisfactory performance was
  reached by 8 May 2007
• Since 8 May the system performed transactions at
  a rate higher than the previous NaTIS system and
  no system downtime has been reported except for
  the 1 hour experienced yesterday due to the power
  blackout

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Current Status

• Old NaTIS performed average of 287,000
  transactions per day (Mar 07)
• Between 13 April and 7 May eNaTIS performed
  average 326,000 transactions per day (13,4 more)
  with 93 uptime
• After interventions (since 8 May 07) eNaTIS
  performed average 619,000 transactions per day
  (115 more) with 100 uptime.

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• eNaTIS is functioning optimally, hence, all
  heavy vehicles that their licences are expired,
  go and renew your licence.
• Thank You