What 'DHET-ready' actually means when a procurement officer asks.

'DHET-ready' is a phrase used loosely in vendor decks and rarely defined in the tender. In practice, a procurement officer is checking four things: data residency, POPIA posture, audit log retention, and the ability to export into the department's reporting templates without a consultant.

A portal that ticks three of those and hand-waves the fourth will still fail the compliance review. The fourth is always the export — because it is the one thing the officer can test in the room.

Before demo day, ask the vendor to produce a CSV matching the DHET template with dummy data in under a minute. If they cannot, the integration work is yours to absorb.