DA slams Radebe's eNatis 'spin'

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 24 May 2007

Transport minister Jeff Radebe and his director-general, Mpumi Mpofu, have addressed Parliament on government's volatile R408 million electronic National Traffic Information System (eNatis). They attempted to assure MPs and the public that the worst was over.

"eNatis is now stable and performing in accordance with the requirements," Radebe told the National Assembly's transport portfolio committee. "eNatis has not been a failure at all."

However, Democratic Alliance transport spokesman Stuart Farrow says their presentation amounted to "spin".

He adds: "They came with a very hard spin, saying it's the best in the world, etc, but at the end of the day, they had to get consultants in. With respect to the minister, if they needed to get outside help and new equipment, the contract and contractor were not up to scratch."

The Business Day reports this morning that Radebe noted that, since 8 May, after interventions by the department - particularly the installation of a fourth database server - the system had performed at a rate 65% higher than the old system. There has been no system downtime except on Tuesday, following an electricity blackout in Midrand.

Radebe added that whereas the old Natis system performed on average 287 000 transactions a day, the new system performed an average 326 000 transactions a day from 13 April to 7 May - or 13.4% more - with 93% uptime. Since then, the new system has performed an average 619 000 transactions a day - 115% more - with 100% uptime.

'Sophisticated' system

"eNatis is one of the most advanced traffic management systems in the world. Similar systems are found in Europe and in the US, but none have the sophistication of the eNatis in respect of road transport management capability," Radebe told MPs. Mpofu, in turn, announced eNatis was now running smoothly and was stable.

The R311 million eNatis tender, which grew to R408 million, was awarded to the Tasima Consortium in 2001. The five-year contract with Tasima was supposed to expire at the end of May, but would be extended to allow for a smooth handover, added Mpofu. Tasima groups together two black empowerment firms and Face Technologies, part of troubled state IT company arivia.kom.

Radebe also told MPs he only yesterday morning saw for the first time a damning auditor general's report on eNatis. The report said there was an 80% chance that a "big bang" implementation would fail. The report was sent to Thabo Tsholetsane, chief executive of the Road Traffic Management Corporation, in February.

The transport committee has requested a copy of the document. Farrow says he would like to know why Tsholetsane, who will take over the running of eNatis from Tasima some time after June, did not alert Radebe or Mpofu of its content in good time. "He should have made the DG or minister aware of its contents," Farrow says.