ICTA responds to Business Times report on e-government project
View(s):The Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), in a response to our report last week headlined “Samsung Network to get multimillion dollar e-NIC project”, says ‘allegations in the article’ are incorrect and baseless.
The clarification sent by Athula Pushpakumara, ICTA Director – Strategic Communications and Media on key points in the article is published with our reporter’s response.
ICTA says: A company named Asset Networks never signed a contract on behalf of Samsung Networks for the Lanka Government Network project
Our reporter says (BT):
Samsung’s agent in Sri Lanka is Asset Network and our sources say that part of the agreement was signed with Asset Network and another section with Samsung.
ICTA – The contract for the establishment of LGN was signed between ICTA and Samsung Networks in 2006 consequent to a credit facility provided by the Korean Government.
BT – We stand by our story that US $15 million had been loaned from the Import and Export Bank of Korea (IEBK) and the tender had been given to both parties (Samsung Networks and its agent – Asset Network).
ICTA -There were more than two companies which submitted bids for LGN in 2006 , Samsung Networks bid was not the highest bid, as incorrectly stated in the article, Samsung Networks’ bid WAS the lowest bid for the LGN.
BT – Two Korean companies – Korea Telecom and Samsung — submitted bids for the project.
We stand by our story that Korea Telecom made the lowest bid, not Samsung, and that only two bids were submitted. ICTA says there were other bids. Who were they and what were their bids?
ICTA -No tender procedures were by passed in awarding any relevant contract.
BT- We stand by our story.
ICTA -To imply that the e-government project has become a white elephant is to be dishonest and state a complete falsehood.
BT – At least two divisional secretaries have officially reported faults in the project. In one case, a divisional secretary wrote to the Finance Ministry saying due to low-quality UPS units (received under the project), computers have failed to start and there have even been problems with the mouse.
Another divisional secretary in another letter to the Finance Ministry said that the equipment provided to them under the e-Government Network project continues to give problems.
There are many other instances of problems. Furthermore under another ICTA project (e-Sri Lanka which involves just four key government institutions), the Motor Traffic Department encountered problems with the system and as a result has outsourced some of its work.
ICTA – We at, ICTA, wish to know on what basis the said article says that the e-government project is white elephant. We consider it irresponsible Journalism for the said article to make such a baseless and false communication with no apparent research to support the allegation.
BT – Our previous response answers the allegation of irresponsible reporting. On the other hand it was our obligation and duty to inform the public as to how public funds are being used and squandered.
There has been a lot of research conducted on e-government project by local and foreign experts which has raised many flaws. One research report, issued about 18 months ago, said that the e-pensions, e-population register and e-divisional secretariats (projects) are still stuck at the pilot stage.
This report said, “out of the big eGov projects such as ePensions, ePopulation Register, eDivisional Secretariats are still stuck at the pilot stage. Those projects were conceptualized during 2005-2006 period. It should be noted that those big projects go through minimum 4-6 procurement stages (EoI for GPR study, RFP for GPR, EoI for software development, RFP for software development, RFP for hardware, EoI for SQA, RFP for SQA) which take up over 3 years. Still we have completely failed only in (the) eForeign Employment project. The technical team of Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment which signed off all study and design documents said in 2011 they do not want the system as their current system can meet their requirements.
That was communicated when the new system was 25%-30% developed. (It should be noted that the requirement verification and software development took longer than expected due to many reasons.) However, the software development contract had to be terminated and project was abandoned.”
Finally instead of making “baseless’ accusations against the BT, Mr Pushpakumara and ICTA should ask other government agencies which have a lot of information on the flaws in the project.
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