The Free State will determine whether it received value for money in a provincial government website deal, premier Ace Magashule said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Magashule said, following public concerns, that his provincial government had to look at “whether we received value for money”.<\/p>\n
The deal would therefore be investigated, he said at a business breakfast organised by The New Age newspaper and SABC 2.<\/p>\n
According to reports the Free State government was paying R40 million 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Since the start of the project in 2011 the Free State premier’s department had spent about R14.8m on the project.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The State Information and Technology Agency (Sita) was responsible for the hosting and security of the websites.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The second phase would bring community radio stations on board with continuous content development, and updating, and broadcasting of news and activities.<\/p>\n
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