The Democratic Alliance (DA) will ask for the tender documents that were submitted for the revamped Gauteng Online project, now called the e-Learning Solution.
This comes after the former service provider, Cloudseed, won a R107 million contract to provide connectivity for the project, despite numerous problems during its first deal.
On Wednesday, the Gauteng Department of Finance (GDF) announced Huawei Technologies was awarded a R289 million contract to provide 88 000 10-inch tablets to the e-Learning Solution, while Cloudseed will provide WiFi and 3G connectivity for a period of two years.
"It doesn't make sense that the same person wins every time, and it raises the question that maybe there is some kind of favouritism that's taking place," says DA member of the provincial legislature for Gauteng, Mike Moriarty.
"We want to see the score sheets, we want to know who did the evaluations and we want to see how the various bidders scored." He says as much as the party wants to see educational opportunities for the province's learners, it is still important that the right service providers are appointed.
"Huawei is not an industry leader in tablet technology, so that raises a big question mark. And people who do connectivity are a dime a dozen. So we need to see the score sheets."
Gauteng offline?
In April 2007, the Gauteng Online programme was transferred to the GDF from the Department of Education, and the contract awarded to SMM Telematics Consortium, which is now Cloudseed. Since its inception, the project has regularly come under fire for allegedly being ineffective, with media reports claiming a number of schools experienced significant downtime in connectivity.
A lack of security at the schools was also a problem, with equipment being stolen more than once, despite security firms having been contracted to guard the schools.
In May, three security firms claimed they went under after not being paid for security services rendered to Cloudseed. Cloudseed hit back, saying the companies lacked the necessary resources and skills to provide services at the required service levels, and instituted legal proceedings against them.
Meanwhile, during this time, a spokesperson for the GDF confirmed the department still owes Cloudseed R200 million. It is unclear whether that account has since been settled.
GDF head of finance, Stuart Lumka, says Cloudseed won the contract in an open tender and was appointed because it came in at the lowest price. He says the tender process was in the end "a price battle".
In response to a question why Cloudseed was again awarded a connectivity tender despite the problems experienced in the past, finance MEC Mandla Nkomfe said the GDF has put measures in place to ensure satisfactory service delivery.
"These contracts will be regulated through performance-based agreements," says Nkomfe. "All payments will only flow on receipt of satisfactory service delivery, which must comply with the service level standards."
He says a 95% network uptime standard is embedded in the service level agreement with Cloudseed, and non-compliance of this standard will be punishable in terms of the contract.
Lease vs purchase
Moriarty also poses the question whether the department compared the long-term costs of leasing devices as opposed to buying them.
"Were there any lease options? Has anybody done the calculations? Obviously when someone leases devices to you, they are facing the same problem [of devices becoming out of date]. They could possibly then charge an inflated price for the leasing. But unless you ask for a bid and get some proposals, you are not going to have the option to compare purchase against leasing."
According to Lumka, the GDF opted to purchase tablets rather than leasing them, as it will be a better investment for the department. ""After spending R2.2 billion on Gauteng Online [over five years] we have nothing to show for it," he says. "This time we opted for the outright acquisition of the hardware, which will then belong to government."
IDC analyst Spiwe Chireka says the rate at which the tablets lose value depends largely on which brands are being used. "On the one hand, we have the likes of Samsung and Apple that release new models every other couple of months. However, it is important to note that the incremental changes with every new model are minimal and do not necessarily impact the core functionality of the device and therefore it is not a train smash to buy the devices instead."
She says the true question is what happens to the devices as soon as the next really disruptive functionality comes out. "The best option for GDF is to go for a managed mobility approach which can in turn, if on a fully outsourced model, have the devices belonging to the service provider and consequently the responsibility for device upgrades, if and when needed, lies with the service provider."
Chireka notes the most disruptive thing seen in the tablet market over the last three years is the change in size. Future changes to aesthetics, such as laptops that double up as tablets, will not affect their functionality, she says.
"Now having said that, the general lifespan of a computing device before it starts getting slow and all, is about 24 months in most cases and so the challenge lies in the costs involved in upgrades to the tablets to support the need for higher processing power and more complex applications after the two-year span."
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