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Durban City Hall, the administrative seat of the eThekwini municipality.<\/p>\n
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An IT expert was paid nearly R1 million by the eThekwini Municipality to review the city\u2019s new billing system, but the advice he offered came in for criticism from ANC councillor Nigel Gumede, who felt he had not given the executive committee the solutions it needed. <\/p>\n
Gumede said the council needed to be advised if it should carry on pumping money into the proposed Revenue Management System or ditch it. <\/p>\n
Information technology expert Leepy Shabangu\u2019s company, Liepzig Advisory IT CC, was paid R900 000 to give an overview of the risks associated with going live on the new system and to prescribe the various options available to the city. <\/p>\n
Liepzig Advisory was hired by the municipality in June because of uncertainty about further developments of the system and when the project was likely to be finalised. <\/p>\n
After his presentation to exco yesterday, it became clear that Durban ratepayers would have to fork out millions more before the system, which has already cost nearly R500 million to develop, got off the ground. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe presenter is too neutral for me,\u201d Gumede said. \u201cWe are saying we have a project that we feel has cost us a fortune… If you were running a business or an organisation as big as this one, which option would you take?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n
Shabangu gave the council three options. It could stop any further developments of the system and continue using the current Coins billing system; install an ERP system (a generic system); or continue developing the system. <\/p>\n
All the options came with risks and financial implications, he explained. The municipality collects just over R20 billion a year in revenue. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to the RMS, things are not as good as we\u2019d like them to be, but not as terrible as other people may make them out to be. The system has come so far and the city has an asset that is 70 percent complete,\u201d said Shabangu. <\/p>\n
In response to Gumede\u2019s comments, Shabangu recommended that the city continue developing the system. <\/p>\n
DA caucus leader Tex Collins said there were \u201cred flags\u201d throughout the report, and too many unknowns, but it was unfair to ask Shabangu to tell the city what to do. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no way on Earth we can make a decision based on this report. I agree [with Gumede]: it is very neutral. But he [Shabangu] has given us a clear view of what\u2019s wrong with our RMS,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Speaker Logie Naidoo suggested that the city hire external consultants to monitor the system from month to month. <\/p>\n
Municipal manager S\u2019bu Sithole said there would be a report-back to the council in two weeks, but the most favourable option was to continue developing the system. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Durban City Hall, the administrative seat of the eThekwini municipality. An IT expert was paid nearly R1 million by the eThekwini Municipality to review the city\u2019s new billing system, but the advice he offered came in for criticism from ANC councillor Nigel Gumede, who felt he had not given the executive committee the solutions it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-14161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}