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Gauteng Online project at schools falls short – audit

It has been more than eight years, and R3 billion has been spent, but the aim of having working computer laboratories at every public school in Gauteng has yet to be achieved. A damning internal audit by the Gauteng Department of Finance, leaked to Independent Newspapers, has found that Gauteng Online is not functioning economically, efficiently or effectively. Gauteng Online aims to place a computer laboratory in every school in the province and give every pupil an e-mail address. First launched in 2002 with a R1bn tender, the project failed dismally. In 2007 the Gauteng Shared Service Centre and Department of Education issued a new tender worth R2bn over five years to get the project going.

The tender was awarded to the SMMT Telematics Consortium, whose chairman, Tebogo Mogashoa, has received several government tenders. The audit was done in the 2010/11 year at 50 schools across five districts. It found many problems, including:

Inadequate security measures.
Gauteng Online being offline.
Inadequate support and maintenance of equipment.
Inadequate training of users.
A failure to replace stolen goods.
A failure to pay service providers on time.

The DA has called for the contract with SMMT to be terminated, saying the project was characterised by poor management and non-adherence to the service-level agreement. DA MPL Khume Ramulifho said he was concerned that the contract would be renewed again in December. The audit found that many of the problems lay with inadequate management of the project and that evaluation of the performance of the service providers was often lacking. In certain schools there was no evidence that stolen equipment had been reported to the police. The audit found that schools were offline for long periods of time, ranging from two months to 16 months.

The audit states: “Our visits to the 50 selected schools found that 8 percent of the laboratories were not fully furnished with the required equipment and facilities.” Part of the reason for non-delivery was the late payment of the suppliers: SMMT, RMB and Nokusa Consulting. There was underspending of R164.9m on the project in 2010/11, a year in which R400m was assigned to Gauteng Online, the audit found.

Source: iol.co.za

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Gauteng Online project at schools falls short – audit

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