Free State website cost to be probed
2013-03-06 14:17
Bloemfontein - The Free State will determine whether it
received value for money in a provincial government website deal, Premier Ace
Magashule said on Wednesday.
Magashule said, following public concerns, that his
provincial government had to look at "whether we received value for
money".
The deal would, therefore, be investigated he said at a
business breakfast organised by The New Age newspaper and SABC 2.
According to reports the Free State government was paying
R40m for the development of a government website.
Free State Co-operative Governance MEC Olley Mlamleli
said at the same event that the province spent R47m re-engineering 38
provincial government websites.
She said the deal included research, design and content
development.
The province said the total project, involving 38
websites, cost R24m in the 2011/2012 finance year, and would cost R23.8m in the
2012/13 financial year.
Since the start of the project in 2011 the Free State
premier's department had spent about R14.8m on the project.
This formed part of the R23.8m budgeted for in 2012/2013.
The rest of the R23.8 million would be financed by the
provincial co-operative governance department.
The State Information and Technology Agency (Sita) was
responsible for the hosting and security of the websites.
The consortium of Cherry-Online-Ikamva-Juggernaut, in
association with various community radio stations, had been appointed to deal
with the design, research, content development and generation in the first
phase of the project.
The second phase would bring community radio stations on
board with continuous content development, and updating, and broadcasting of
news and activities.
- SAPA
