Something fishy about GBN tender - experts

The tender issued for the Gauteng Broadband Network, which will take over the Gauteng Online schools project, has no specifications catering for schools. Last Tuesday, Finance MEC Mandla Nkomfe announced that the Gauteng Online tender had been cancelled and would instead be incorporated into the Gauteng Broadband Network (GBN). He said schools would no longer need the current school computer labs, which were installed over the past five years at a cost of about R2 billion, because they would be moving to tablets. In the meanwhile, the government would extend the contract with current service provider SMMT Online (now known as CloudSeed) on a monthly basis. The MEC insisted it would take no longer than a month or two before the move to the GBN.

Nkomfe’s announcement appeared odd, as a few hours earlier, he had answered questions in the legislature from DA finance spokesman Mike Moriarty. In the answer, he effectively said the Gauteng Online tender was competitive and he would not consider halting the process unless he was given compelling evidence. Nkomfe said at the press conference that the government was ready to launch the broadband project and an announcement would be made in two weeks. IT experts have, however, questioned Nkomfe’s time frames, saying it is not possible for the GBN tender to be rolled out in a few months as the tender specifies that 1 600km of fibre-optic cables has to be laid across Gauteng, a process that can take years. The tender, which went out for bids in December and closed at the end of January, makes no provision for schools.

The tender said the successful service provider for the GBN would have to “operate and maintain a province-wide broadband network that will offer broadband fibre access initially to Gauteng provincial government-owned buildings, Thusong centres, economic zones and top 20 priority townships for a period of five years”. The economic nodes are listed as the Joburg CBD, Hatfield, Alexandra, Bekkersdal, Evaton and Winterveld. There are also 20 townships and 400 Gauteng government buildings listed. There is no mention of the more than 2 000 schools in the province, although education district officers and a few colleges are on the list. The tender says the core network will consist of an initial eight core locations, at a distance of no greater than 80km apart.

In addition to these eight core locations, the network will host 400 buildings on the network with 1 gigabyte connections. An IT expert, who cannot be named as he works with the government, said bids for the tender went in for around R1bn. “But the tender did not specify schools. If you add schools to the network, it would probably double the amount of the tender, and the tender scope would have to be changed.” The expert said setting up the GBN could take years, so he believes that SMMT Online’s contract will be renewed for a long period of time. He said the company received around R30 million a month to run Gauteng Online labs. Moriarty said the cancellation of the Gauteng Online tender meant one of two things had happened: “Either there was corruption in putting out the tender, or there was incompetence. Either way, the citizens of Gauteng have lost out in one way or another.”