Cipro's business case document was not confidential, but would not normally have been released to outside parties, says a Cipro spokesperson.
The R153 million enterprise content management (ECM) system was awarded to ValorIT in February 2009. This was after the company's bid came in at R152.7 million, a two percentage point variation on the budgeted amount by Cipro (Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office).
This was one of the issues that raised a red flag by the auditor-general, when it conducted its investigation into the awarding of the contract.
ValorIT and Mantra Consulting, the companies working together on the contract, have both claimed the business case document, which details Cipro's specifications and budget for the ECM installation, was not confidential and was readily available.
However, Elsabie Conradie, Cipro's head of communications, marketing and stakeholder management, says the business case was an internal document and could be best described as work product.
“One would not normally give a document of this nature to the public, even if it was not marked confidential. In essence, this is the business plan,” she notes.
Conradie could not say how ValorIT and Mantra Consulting managed to get hold of it. However, she did admit that parts of it were presented to potential bidders in the information session held in April 2009.
According to the auditor-general's report, Cipro gave two different answers to the questions it asked on how ValorIT's bid came so close to the budgeted amount. Cipro's now suspended CEO Keith Sendwe first stated the document was made available to all the bidders. However, CFO Renier du Toit later answered that only parts of the document were made available in the information session.
Answer generator
Cipro's suspended CIO, Michael Twum-Darko, allegedly supplied the answers in both cases.
The suspensions of the CEO and CIO were announced in Parliament, on Tuesday, by trade and industry minister Rob Davies. He also said ValorIT had been given 10 days to state why the contract should not be repudiated.
Davies, however, insisted then that the ECM system was still technically sound, but it was the way in which the tender was awarded that was the problem.
Andricus van der Westhuizen, Democratic Alliance (DA) MP, says: “Although the minister had at first dragged his feet over the matter - even stating to a portfolio committee in November 2009 that the ECM tender had been given a 'clean bill of health by the auditor-general' - the DA welcomes the recently announced steps to act against those implicated.”
Van der Westhuizen says the auditor-general found the awarding of the tender to be seriously flawed on a number of counts, including inconsistent scoring by the bid evaluation committees, Cipro's failure to evaluate the financial position of the bidders, and the fact that no business case had been approved by the Department of Public Service and Administration.
He also points out that Twum-Darko had been appointed to the position despite not having received the appropriate security clearances.
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