
South African province spends $15.4M (140M ZAR) on WordPress site - buyx
http://www.techcentral.co.za/r140m-for-govt-website-report/
======
RyanZAG
The causes behind this are truly more systemic than mere corruption, and
actually pull at the very root of problems in Africa and many developing
economies in the current tech environment.

In USA/Europe/increasing in China and India, basic tech and internet projects
are fairly well understood by the general public. The idea of wordpress,
blogs, and even a basic understanding of the internet and modern technology
are fairly prevalent. Even with corruption in a small Texan town, something
like pushing through a Wordpress site for $15m would be impossible - there is
an understanding of how a website is created and what constitutes a million
dollar vs a thousand dollar technology project.

I live in South Africa, so I see this every day: there is zero understanding
by the majority of the population into any internet related projects. Our
major new tech companies tend to boost up the Johannesburg Stock Exchange into
incredible valuations before suddenly realizing that their business models are
terrible. Most entrepreneurship in the country is focused on targeting
townships - people who can barely afford to eat, let alone think about
technology, and unsurprisingly, these companies turn to government grants or
dissolve.

These are all systemic problems from countries simply not being able to keep
up with the rapidly accelerating technological developments - and I think it's
going to be a massive problem in the future for any country not focusing on
getting into the 'internet rush'. It should be clear to most of us on HN just
how important these kind of tech innovations are going to be on the future of
humanity.

~~~
jbail
I've seen many millions of dollars spent on websites, logos, and webpage
designs in the United States over the past decade. In many cases, there was
clearly A LOT of profit built into the price. $15 million is no doubt a lot
for a Wordpress site. But, I've seen $6 million spent on a logo. Is that more
or less ridiculous?

~~~
ajross
Surely it's no less ridiculous. But, to step on some touchy ground here...

The executives who approved the logo were very well-compensated tech industry
leaders. And if they made a dumb decision then they deserved the finacial pain
and community scorn they deserved. Shame on them. But the folks who paid for
the blog were mid-level government officials in a comparatively impoverished
nation with little local tech leadership or expertise to draw on. They got
duped.

Our moral compass wants to draw different conclusions here. Which is the
truth? Damned if I know.

~~~
fleitz
It's really impossible to tell without knowing more details, given how many
times gov't clients change requirements it's easily possible that they were
just wasting time.

Also speaking of lots of money for wordpress sites, what did AOL pay for
Techcrunch?

~~~
mercurial
Apples and oranges. AOL was not buying design and developer time. They were
buying talent and eyeballs.

------
gingerlime
It does seem totally ridiculous, but I think in many cases governments bring
these things on themselves with highly complicated tender processes and red-
tape (many time in the name of due-process, fairness and transparency)

Imagine putting a bid for this work. Do you think most of the effort is in
building the website itself, or dealing with so many bureaucrats, forms,
approvals and so on? Making sure your developers have X certification and your
office is compliant with Y regulation, and that all your processes are ISO
certified and so on... This stuff costs money, and quite a lot.

So any sane company who wishes to enter into business with any government
organization usually take these substantial extra costs into account, which
ends up inflating the price. The sad thing of course is that it's the citizens
who end up footing the bill.

EDIT to clarify: I am not trying to say that the price makes sense in _this
particular case_. I'm talking more about the general problem with govt-related
contracts.

~~~
lusr
Let's dig into these numbers. Assuming the R40m value is correct over 3 years,
then:

\- since there are 248 working days in a South African year on average, the
average daily cost ran to ~R53,763 or ~R6,720 per hour

\- at the banks I've worked at, that'll buy you 10 intermediate on-site
contract developers, or 6 senior developers, from an average consulting house
which factors in all of these overhead expenses (including travel, etc.) you
mention... and that's doing skilled development; this is WordPress work, but
let's be generous and say they bill the same

It's hard to believe they required anywhere near that many developers
(designers are much cheaper and I can't imagine they hired more than 1 or 2),
or that hardware/service contracts would have cost much more.

------
Q_the_Novice
I'm from South Africa and this simply demonstrates the extent of corruption
within our government departments. It is not uncommon for government
departments to inflate tender budgets so as to benefit from kickbacks. I'm
appalled by such such acts, firstly as a South African citizen and secondly as
a hard working web developer.

~~~
yen223
This sort of blatant corruption is not uncommon, unfortunately. 2 years back
my home country's government spent about $600,000 on Facebook pages:

[http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/tourism-...](http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/tourism-
ministry-rm1.8-million-spent-on-facebook-pages)

~~~
Q_the_Novice
It gets even better, the company that designed the website doesn't even have
its own website: <http://letlaka.co.za/>.

~~~
yen223
Can you blame them? Have you seen how much websites cost?

------
mercurial
"Ntsele told the newspaper opposition parties had an agenda against black
businessmen and that the website’s cost was fair."

Yeah, right...

------
friendly_chap
This is exactly the kind of corruption which goes on in my country (Hungary).
I hereby want to ask every HNer if he wants to team up with me and create a
nonprofit startup which lets people document corruption in their country/city
etc, things which are too small for wikileaks, or publicity like this.

~~~
diego_moita
I don't know about Hungary but in 3rd world countries (I am Brazilian) the
worst is not that these things happen, it is that voters are too stupid to
care.

One example: a couple years ago it was discovered that the president of the
Brazilian Senate and Congress had a child with a mistress and a lobbyist
office was paying the child support. It was a scandal that made big news. He
resigned from the presidency but remained in the Senate. Later on he was
reelected as senator and chosen president of senate again, last month. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renan_Calheiros>

~~~
namank
You should check out the Indian House of Commons, called the Lok Sabha. Rape
and bribery are a prereq.

~~~
pm90
No, they are not. The incidence of criminal cases is large but not in the
majority, or a prerogative:

[http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-13/india...](http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-13/india/32662755_1_criminal-
cases-mlas-national-election-watch)

~~~
namank
Being in the minority doesn't mean they can be treated as outliers. Those
ministers have multiple cases against them.

Given the nature of public attitude and their trust in the justice system in a
developing country such as India, you can rest assured that the number of
reported cases are below the number of actual occurrences.

------
capitalisthakr
I was involved in a project for the SA Government portal back in ...the late
2000's.... and I remember how much bullshit we had to put up with to get the
contract. At the end of a year and a half of developing a highly custom CMS
system for them to manage the portal they canned the project (and the few
million ZAR of taxpayer money they'd payed us) only to contract in some small
black owned company to develop something. I suspect this is linked.

I need to meet this Tumi Ntsele person. She's a friggin' genius.

------
festaans
Found the theme used on the site
<http://www.londonthemes.com/themes/londonlive/>

~~~
festaans
$40 theme = R140m (that how thing roll in South Africa)

~~~
bmmayer1
You're forgetting about the 385,000% income tax.

------
buyx
The website in question: <http://www.freestateonline.fs.gov.za/>

~~~
jameswyse
It's ridiculously slow for me. The site has been loading for 1.4 minutes and
I've only received 146KB so far and there's still nothing on the screen.

Well worth the price..

~~~
kawsper
What are you basing that on? Your placement to the servers?

A lot of american websites hosted decent places (Bluebox comes to mind) is
also slow from European connections. You need to calculate your location to
the servers if you want to know if something is slow or not.

~~~
taejo
It's slow from South Africa, too. Source: I'm here.

OTOH, it was fine this morning -- it's clearly suffering from HN/Reddit
effect/Slashdot effect.

------
_sentient
This is the supposed web developer's website: <http://www.cherryonline.co>

~~~
Havoc
Registered with a South African ISP, but a Colombian top level domain. (
.co.za is South African). Real pros at work...

------
gesman
Just a normal money laundering process with prearranged kickbacks.

------
Shtirlic
In Russia this website would cost at least $30m.

------
nicholassmith
So it's running an exploited version of WordPress and suddenly has a
significant amount of people looking at it? This _always_ ends well.

Good money if you can get it though, $15.4m for knocking something out in a
few days and job is done. Sit back and order some mojitos.

------
boh
The Wordpress theme they used to make the website:

[http://themeforest.net/item/london-live-3-in-1-news-
magazine...](http://themeforest.net/item/london-live-3-in-1-news-magazine-and-
blog/full_screen_preview/154462)

$40 on Theme Forest

------
notjustanymike
For a $15 million site you think they'd compress their CSS and javascript.

~~~
noarchy
They didn't do much customization at all. They used an already-existing
Wordpress theme. Compare the site to the theme:
<http://www.londonthemes.com/themes/londonlive/>

------
asimjalis
This is similar to the story a few days ago about West Virginia spending $5
million on Cisco routers it did not need. In general government tend to be
overcharged. This is not unique to Africa.

Also some of the cost is justified. Getting government contracts requires
paperwork and meeting conditions that add to the cost of the contract. Also
government payment cycles are different. So the contractor has to build in
some margin for delayed payments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5283160>

------
infoman
~$12,999,987.00 margin on this one

~~~
angry-hacker
The theme being used called "London Live" is for sale here:
[http://themeforest.net/item/london-live-3-in-1-news-
magazine...](http://themeforest.net/item/london-live-3-in-1-news-magazine-and-
blog/154462)

Costs 40 dollars.

------
janlukacs
Same thing happened in Romania with a lot of govt. websites. The worst thing
is they are usually unusable crap... costing millions of taxpayers money.

------
Aloisius
Sometimes I feel like starting a consultancy that prepares fair price quotes
for technology implementations for governments, but doesn't actually do them
so there is no conflict of interest. That way governments can pay $1000
upfront to see if the bids they are getting are over or under.

------
CurtMonash
I can't see this wonder, because it gives me a Connection Refused error. :)

------
offordscott
Without seeing the proposal or statement of work from the website developer,
I'm not going to comment on whether this is an outrage or not.

------
datashaman
Broken by the high traffic, no doubt. Guess they're gonna be hitting the
coffers for load testing soon...

~~~
EA
That's what they get for using Dreamhost.

------
ttyrq
Man.... how do I get in on this racket?

------
jenntoda
And the site is down. Ops.

------
instakill
The real figure is R40m.

