R100-million Free State Wordpress website details emerge

koeksGHT said:
Eish, I charge 2k for a basic wordpress site. Markup much?
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Throw your salary in there for 3 years of support, maybe someone else to populate the data full time and you'd still be a VERY long way from that R100 million...
 
I want some of that pie :cry: I offer to do the end-user training. R25 000 per hour. PM me with more info.
 
Looking at the number of pages on there and the few plugins, I can't see it costing more than 10 - 15k to develop, and that's high for WordPress with a theme thrown in, and probably a few css adjustments.

For updates + content, you don't need someone full time, you just need a dude to update stuff every other day - it'll take like 30 minutes at a time sometimes. But still, even at R20k a month + development costs of R10k it's like R730 000.00 total for all 3 years.

But instead at their stated cost, let's say I developed the site for R1 million!! Then 3 years to support the site and update content earns me R2,75 million per month.
 
HideInLight said:
14 million in travel costs?
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The developer lives on a private island (courtesy of the down-payment for development), and needs to fly in every week to receive print outs of the new data, then flies back to input it in WordPress.

If a return flight economy class costs R15k(I know it's much less to a lot of destinations), that would buy 933 international flights - or 26 flights a month for 3 years. :/
 
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"There is no need to further comment on the details of this matter as we have confirmed the total expenditure on the project thus far."
*Ahem*. We the people will decide when there is no more need to comment.
 
Mudshark said:
"There is no need to further comment on the details of this matter as we have confirmed the total expenditure on the project thus far."
*Ahem*. We the people will decide when there is no more need to comment.
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^^
This!!!
 
Mudshark said:
"There is no need to further comment on the details of this matter as we have confirmed the total expenditure on the project thus far."
*Ahem*. We the people will decide when there is no more need to comment.
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Exactly!! Idiots, it seems they still do not realise that they are PUBLIC SERVANTS and that we the taxpayer fund all this.
 
Really depends on how this is managed and what type of integration the websites have. Everyone says wordpress, because it's an opensource tool to manage content, but (and I have not seen the tender report) maybe the cost included some expensive CMS (Vignette or otherwise) and also included upfront purchase of hardware or hosting cost.

If you run 38 websites, you would probably self-host or at least manage it with a team of technical support staff (that team would be small) but then you would also run a content team (you would probably need to look at 2 content people per site and a pool of graphics designers etc). When you then add in management/project management, your operational costs of 38m/p.a. might not be far-fetched (if you consider opexed hardware etc).

I am honestly more pissed off that someone built a toll-system for billions of rands and that our prez has a cushy place for 250bn.
 
^^^

They are bog standard WP sites dude... some of us have played on them.
 
ToxicBunny said:
^^^

They are bog standard WP sites dude... some of us have played on them.
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I know that they are stock standard WP websites, but I doubt the tender response stated that the technology is open source and free. More then often you find that RFPs charge for services and products which are part of the LAMP stack. My point is that it is tender fraud and one can not solely blame the government for the lack of knowledge in IT. In most of those government tenders you will find that a number of service providers collude with purpose to distribute tenders amongst themselves. Tender costs are artificially raised, so you will never face a really cheap tender proposal.

I honestly don't blame the government for it's inaptitude of understanding what it technically means to implement something like this. Even consultants like KPM/Accenture etc would charge excessively to vet such a simple tender requirement. Just look at the epic failure of Sita (about the one and only institution which should aid government in IT).
 
If it was 100% more than it should have cost in the private sector I could understand not blaming the government too much.. but at R100m for something that should only cost maximum R5m over 3 years, I place the blame squarely in governments court because that is beyond just "not understanding IT", its is blatant corruption to try and enrich a few connected individuals.
 
the Free State’s claims that it would cost them under R50-million
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The old story: If they catch you, first deny, then lie and then .... confess. :cry:
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
Really depends on how this is managed and what type of integration the websites have. Everyone says wordpress, because it's an opensource tool to manage content, but (and I have not seen the tender report) maybe the cost included some expensive CMS (Vignette or otherwise) and also included upfront purchase of hardware or hosting cost.

If you run 38 websites, you would probably self-host or at least manage it with a team of technical support staff (that team would be small) but then you would also run a content team (you would probably need to look at 2 content people per site and a pool of graphics designers etc). When you then add in management/project management, your operational costs of 38m/p.a. might not be far-fetched (if you consider opexed hardware etc).


I am honestly more pissed off that someone built a toll-system for billions of rands and that our prez has a cushy place for 250bn.
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WTF??
A couple of bog standard Wordpress sub-sites made off one main setup with no real content updates to really speak of and non-existent maintenance for R2.75M odd per month and you are not too bothered. Seriously??? Just think about the size and skill level of a team you can put together for that. Then read the articles from the beginning noting the site was easily hacked, has no real customisation to speak of and the content is not exactly fresh and well put together.

I rate this worse than Nkandla and etolls as they still leave you with some actual infrastructure at the end. ToxicBunny nails it here.

ToxicBunny said:
If it was 100% more than it should have cost in the private sector I could understand not blaming the government too much.. but at R100m for something that should only cost maximum R5m over 3 years, I place the blame squarely in governments court because that is beyond just "not understanding IT", its is blatant corruption to try and enrich a few connected individuals.
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