IEC opens up website
2009-01-20 12:12
Cape Town - With just over three weeks to go to a final voter registration drive ahead of this year's elections, the South African Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has opened its website to all users.
The IEC website was previously inaccessible to computer users not using Microsoft Windows or Internet Explorer.
According to a report on the MyBroadband website, the IEC chief information officer, Libisi Maphanga, said in November last year that the organisation, which oversees elections in the country, would spend R3m to fix the website.
The website is now functioning and, despite occasional error messages, does allow citizens to check their registration status online.
The site also contains a number of election guides to assist citizens.
Maphanga said previously that the IEC restricted access to the website to ensure that non-Microsoft users were not given the wrong information.
This however frustrated many users, some of which filed a complaint with the human rights commission.
Users argued that the South African government had an open source software policy and that denying citizens access to the website using their own choice of browser was a violation of human rights.