The cost of the eNatis electronic traffic information system increased from an initial R354m to almost R600m, said Department of Transport director-general Mpumi Mpofu on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
However, the bulk of the increase was due to an "expanded mandate", not escalation of the original costs, she told a media briefing at Parliament. <\/p>\n
She said the original contract price for the system, which links vehicle and driver records with police, financing and insurance data, was R311m, plus R43m in VAT. <\/p>\n
Increases on that amount had been R4.6m because of fluctuating exchange rates, and R51m due to consumer price inflation, which brought the total to R410m – all due to elements beyond the department’s control. <\/p>\n
The "expanded mandate" increases, following requests by the provinces, had been R98.3m for software and R44.9m for hardware, and R39m for additional eNatis sites. <\/p>\n
This brought the total cost of the system to R594m. The department was satisfied there were no unjustifiable cost overruns. <\/p>\n
She said the department was still paying technology consortium Tasima, which won the contract to supply the system, R6m a month for "ongoing work". <\/p>\n
Mpofu, who earlier on Wednesday faced Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts, told the briefing there had been "credible progress" in the operation and durability of the system. <\/p>\n
"eNatis has stood the test of time in terms of functionality and improved service delivery," she said. <\/p>\n
She said the auditor-general had made 105 critical "findings" in his 2006\/2007 audit of eNatis, but by the 2007\/2008 audit, 96 of these had been fully resolved, and nine partly resolved. <\/p>\n
She said before eNatis was launched on April 12 last year, its predecessor, the Natis or national traffic information system, was processing an average of 300 000 transactions a day. <\/p>\n
After some teething problems, eNatis’s average had shot up to 600 000 a day, which had been maintained ever since. <\/p>\n
"In its first 13 months, an average of 12 million transactions a month was maintained," she said. <\/p>\n
She said 99.5% of all queries were processed in one minute. <\/p>\n
eNatis would now be transferred from the department to the parastatal Road Traffic Management Corporation in a process that could take up to a year and would be overseen by the State Information Technology Agency. <\/p>\n
At the Treasury’s insistence, the department had conducted a risk assessment of the hand-over, and despite being "once bitten, twice shy", was confident the change-over was feasible. <\/p>\n