R744,000 down the drain

South Africa’s R744,000 DigiTech.gov.za website has been inaccessible since around June 2024, and the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies has been silent about the downtime.

Its latest update came in August 2024, when it said it was finalising the process of appointing a new service provider to manage the DigiTech platform.

Three months later, MyBroadband asked the department for an update on the DigiTech website, but it hadn’t answered our questions by publication.

Attempting to access the platform returns an error stating that the webserver unexpectedly closed the connection.

The department’s statement from August explained that the new service provider will be responsible for redesigning, hosting, and maintaining the platform.

“This follows a review of the status of the platform due to a series of inherent operational deficiencies.”

The department said it would ensure that the new provider fulfils its contractual obligations and that DigiTech fulfils its initial purpose and provides value to the public.

Curiously, the start of DigiTech.gov.za’s downtime coincided with several other .gov.za websites going down, including the SANews, Labour.gov.za, and DCDT.gov.za pages.

The State Information Technology Agency (Sita) initially explained that the outage resulted from unstable primary Internet connections at the Centurion and Cape Town points of presence (PoP).

“Sita’s service provider repaired a bend in a fibre connecting to the Cape Town PoP, and the Centurion link was also stabilised. Service improvement discussions are currently taking place between SITA and the Internet Service Provider,” it told MyBroadband.

In May 2024, MyBroadband reported on the platform receiving slight visual updates, with little else being done to improve its functionality.

The update included slight changes to visual elements, including a change in colour scheme to resemble the South African government’s colours more closely.

However, the website itself was still sluggish and laden with errors.

The “digital products portal” frequently showed listings without the respective icons and produced numerous error messages.

Moreover, the portal was designed to promote locally developed digital products through its marketplace, but there was still no means of purchasing or downloading the products listed.

It didn’t even include links to where users can access apps online or download them from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

Issues like these persisted despite the DCDT spending R744,000 to revamp the platform in May 2023.

Former communications minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni launched the platform in May 2022 as part of her department’s World Telecommunications and Information Society Day celebrations.

“The platform allows users to browse and download apps developed across operating systems,” Ntshavheni said at the time.

However, the government received backlash over the site’s poor design and fundamental security flaws, which allowed anyone to upload media to it.

Communications minister Solly Malatsi, who was a DA shadow minister at the time, said it looked like a high school student could have developed the DigiTech website.

“This falls woefully short of what the Department promised for this website, and indicates a serious lack of skill in its design and construction,” Malatsi said at the time.

In May 2023, then-communications minister Mondli Gungubele revealed that the platform had been revamped at a cost of R744,000, which prompted more backlash.

“The old Digitech website did not meet DCDT specifications,” said Gungubele.

He said the DCDT had launched the redesigned site on 30 March 2023.

“The security of the new Digitech site has been enhanced, and new design has been implemented,” added Gungubele.