Free State government defends website project

daveza

daveza

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http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2013/03/05/free-state-government-defends-website-project

A total of 38 websites, and not only one, form part of the Free State's multi-year integrated website project, the provincial government said on Tuesday.

"In total, 38 re-engineered websites form part of this project, including the provincial government's utilisation of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter," said spokesman Mondli Mvambi.

The project included websites for the 11 provincial departments, three provincial public entities and 24 municipalities.

Mvambi was reacting to reports that the Free State government was paying R40 million for the development of a government website.

He said the total project of 38 websites cost R24 million in the 2011/2012 finance year, and would cost R23.8 million in the 2012/13 finance year.

Since the start of the project in 2011, the Free State premier's department had financed about R14.8 million the project. This formed part of the R23.8m budgeted for in the 2012/2013 book year.

This expenditure had audited by the Office of the Auditor General, said Mvambi.

"The premier's department obtained an unqualified audit, also known as a clean audit, for the 2011/2012 financial year."

The State Information and Technology Agency (Sita) was responsible for the hosting and security of the websites in the project.

The consortium of Cherry-Online-Ikamva-Jugganaut, in association with various community radio stations, had been appointed to deal with 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.

The three-year tender award was published in the provincial tender bulletin of February 24, 2012.

Mvambi said the project had experienced two major setbacks.

The Sita servers crashed in October and again two weeks ago, resulting in the loss of a lot of information. The project involved 20 000 approved documents.

Mvambi said the project was now in the final phase, involving a review of the websites of the 24 municipalities.

The province said the Free State government and municipalities' online presence was fragmented, outdated and cluttered with irrelevant information before 2011.

The project was aimed at not only improving this, but at addressing legislative and regulatory compliance aspects of departments, entities and municipalities.

Mvambi said provincial departments and entities had to comply with Treasury instructions on the information to be posted on a website.

Municipalities also had to comply with legislative prescripts in the Municipal Finance Management Act about the running of a website.
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What are the urls for the other 37 websites ?
 
Makes better sense. Maybe someone was shooting from the hip too quickly here?
 
What are the urls for the other 37 websites ?

+1

So now - it appears - they are down to 1 million ZAR per site?

List them.
 
But still even should it be only 38 websites and they say it is only R40m, it is quite astounding and I still want to know where the general maintenance is included and why it is only a content altered website where no “optimisation” what so ever is done…
 
And 24 million + 23.8 million = ZAR 47.8 million over two fin years / 24 months.
 
And 24 million + 23.8 million = ZAR 47.8 million over two fin years.

And hosting a wordpress site of the kind they have, should cost no more than 1.5K per annum.

Click on Municipalities at the top

Try a link ......
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yup, thought as much.
 
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Surely you pay a lump sum for the design of a website & accompanying back-end so that all municipalities can tailor the template to suit them? I don't understand why different municipalities need different websites...b/s.
 
I suppose by now more people have visited their website, than the number of people who visit the free state annually. :)
 
http://www.freestateonline.fs.gov.za/?p=1673

Looks like they write their own praise singing editorials -

The State of the Province Address (SOPA) has been met with immense enthusiasm by members of the public, who said it was relevant and lived up to their expectations as it addressed and prioritised their needs.

Vilakazi Madimabe, of Paul Roux, was ecstatic because the SOPA gave him hope that his community will be getting proper sanitation and water supply.

“As the premier promised, we will now be getting decent toilets and stop using VIP toilets. These toilets are giving us grief, especially during rainy days when the pits fill up with water. This is a scary thing because it means we cannot use the toilets during such times. It is risky.”
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I wonder if poor Vilikaze knows how much these thieves spent on this ' website'.
 
saor said:
Surely you pay a lump sum for the design of a website & accompanying back-end so that all municipalities can tailor the template to suit them? I don't understand why different municipalities need different websites...b/s.
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They also don't have to reinvent their ICT infrastructure for every new website they order,

Be that WWW or intranet.

List those URLs and lets have a look at the IPs
 
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I don’t think these people got the right idea when they heard or read of Robin Hood… They are simply stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. PUNT!!!

They are most definitely robbin the hood…
 
List those websites this spokesman is talking about. I would love to have a closer look at those IPs.
 
DeSLAM said:
List those websites this spokesman is talking about. I would love to have a closer look at those IPs.
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The IP isn't that relevant, as they all seem to go through a SITA reverse proxy. The actual sites could be hosted on different machines without the frontend IP being different.
 
different machines hosted by SITA? Or government sites hosted by a private contractor?

as they all seem to go through a SITA reverse proxy.
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and THEY are where?
 
Hosted by SITA, I would imagine. They're in Centurion.

When the site was "slashdotted" yesterday the SITA proxy was reporting it couldn't reach a server on a 10.x IP...
 
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