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The World’s most Expensive Website - contd.

WIth a little digging, I see that there is general outrage regarding this hugely suspicious deal.  Feedback here is, with a single exception unanimous in its condemnation of this deal. The single supporter asserts that this is the beginning of a great new portal which contains cutting edge technology and claims the media published an “uninformed conclusion’. A webcam, cutting edge?

Another bunch of comments here, and here.

There are questions for which there are currently no answers:

  1. What were the competing bids and why are they not forthcoming?
  2. What were the specs from Durban and why are they not forthcoming?
  3. Who were the competing bids from?
  4. Was there any analysis of previous costs (of other durban.gov websites)?
  5. What were the specs from AdaptIT?
  6. Is there any business connection between Durban Municipality and AdaptIT?
  7. Cape Town’s website for 2010 cost R300,000 - is this R6,200,000 better?
  8. Where was the tender advertised and exactly how did it read?
  9. How many Mercs were bought by the people involved?
  10. Why is the site, after the official launch still not CSS compliant and unable to be viewed in Safari?
  11. The website email address is:2010websmaster@adaptit.co.za - IT DOES NOT EXIST. They can’t even get that right.
  12. The META title and description are the same (The Official Durban 2010 FIFA World Cup™ Host City Website). They should never be the same.
  13. Keywords:<meta name=”keywords” content=”durban, 2010, world cup, fifa, ethekwini, south africa, kzn, kwa-zulu natal, soccer, football” /> - hopeless for obvious reasons.
  14. Validation of the home page comes up with 64 errors and 52 warnings.
  15. Whoever put this together doesn’t understand that for a ‘loose’ DTD, you can’t use ‘/>’ as a tag closer.
For a R3,000 website, fine. For a R6M website, what a joke.
Quote from the lone supporter:
“What wasn’t mentioned is that the site was designed and developed using cutting edge content management and visualisation technologies and is designed to play a key role in marketing the municipality to a global audience through 2010 and beyond. The site launched with 140 content pages, both in English and isiZulu, and will soon be expanded to Spanish, French and German - this is the only 2010 site in South Africa that has set such an ambitious target for reaching out to both locals and the world community.


The article also failed to mention that the site was developed using local Durban based IT and design skills, and some of those skills are in incredible demand in South Africa and worldwide — it’s about creating high value skills in in-demand technologies in support of eThekwini’s goal of developing sustainable IT skills in the municipality. What you see today is only the first release, and there are many exiting and forward looking features on tap for roll out between now and the games, all designed and delivered using local talent.

And again, not reported, Julie-May Ellingson explained to the media that the R 6.5m investment is for high availability server hardware, hosting, software, development and support over a two year period – this is a long term project and there is much, much more to come. ”

Still,

Are You F******g kidding?

I tell you what - I’l do you a real ten minute Manager’s Special for R6,200.000 - come on now, can’t say fairer than that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.