Central Supplier Database Online Registration by DTC

The Central Supplier Database (the CSD), an initiative by the Treasury of South Africa, maintains a list of organisations, institutions, and individuals who can provide goods and services to the government. The CSD serves as the single source of key supplier information for organs of state from 01 April 2016. The database provides consolidated, accurate, up-to-date, complete and verified supplier information to procuring organs of state. DTC can assist with Central Supplier Database Online Registration.

The purpose of centralising government’s supplier database is to reduce duplicaton of effort and cost for both supplier and government while enabling electronic procurement processes. If you are in business with government or intend on doing business with government, you will have to register on the database.

Prospective suppliers interested in pursuing opportunities within the South African government are encouraged to self-register on the CSD. The self-registration application represents an expression of interest from the supplier to conduct business with the South African government. Once submitted, your details are assessed for inclusion on the database.

To date, there are 915, 881 users, with 755, 699 of those users verified as suppliers. The process to register is easy. There are many security features as well.

The database starts by requesting you to supply a high-level password. The password must, inter alia, contain capital letters and numbers, as well as special characters. There are numerous other security features, such as:

When registering on the CSD, not only is the email address confirmed but also a One-Time Pin (OTP), sent as an SMS to the cell phone number provided when registering. This “Out of Band” method provides an additional layer of identity proofing.
When a new bank account is added or any existing bank accounts edited, an OTP will be sent to the supplier’s preferred contact as well as a notification e-mail informing the preferred contact that changes were made to the supplier’s banking information. Email notifications are also sent when changes are submitted. Both are implemented to endeavour to protect the supplier against malicious practices.
The use of a CAPTCHA functionality limit robots and crawlers to access certain areas of the CSD application.
The implementation of role-based access control per user per supplier means that only the supplier’s user/s have access to the supplier information. The CSD does not have an administrative module and thus no single user can be a CSD administrator and access supplier information using the application.
All passwords are encrypted on the database. Any additional users the main user creates only have secondary privileges, which means those additional users are not able to create other users which ensures that control remains with the same user.
The communications channel between the CSD servers and the client’s browser implements SSL security, which means the communication is encrypted and various other additional technical aspects have been implemented to limit other security breaches, such as hacking.
The Supplier Summary Registration Report can only be accessed by other users if you decide to share both your supplier number and security code with them.

The security is comprehensive. Ensure you are well-prepared when you start the registration process.