Thats right! After looking at the eNaTIS website trying to figure out why someone would want to deface already ugly looking sight, I looked at the source of the page and what do I see?

meta content=”Joomla! - Copyright (C) 2005 - 2006 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved.” name=”Generator”

So our new Traffic Website is powered by a *FREE* *OPEN SOURCE* Content Management System?! Thats right folks! This *FREE* *OPEN SOURCE* implementation of Joomla! for the traffic department cost us, the taxpayers R408-million! (http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=308153&area=/insight/insight__national/) Now how the heck is this possible? I realize there is some extra functionality that has been incorporated into the site and that the Database backend might have required some brainpower but R408 Million worth? I just can’t understand it!

Lets have a look at Tasima (the company who “developed” eNaTIS) homepage. Go to http://www.tasima.co.za/. Now, if I was looking at hiring a company to do a web based application for me that would be accessible to the public, I would see what their website looks like. Even their webpage looks terrible! Now according to http://validator.w3.org/ their Website is not even Valid for HTML 4.01 Transitional! Now I ask you, with tears in my little developer eyes, HOW THE HELL CAN THE GOVERNMENT SELECT THEM TO DO SUCH A PROJECT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

The general image of IT in this country is that we do not have the skills to pull off projects such as this. That is because the government keeps selecting idiots like these to develop country critical systems! I can promise you right now, had they have selected a decent company such as Dariel Solutions (http://www.dariel.co.za) or Barone, Budge & Dominick (http://www.bbd.co.za/) or even a smaller company such as Signify Software (http://www.signify.co.za/) they would have had a much safer and better constructed system!

All the above mentioned companies are masters of carefully planning a system, giving the client feedback about progress and TESTING THEIR APPLICATIONS! The government needs to do some research into companies before awarding them a contract such as this. But then again, it is the South African Government we are talking about and they aren’t always too fond of actually doing work. Especially tedious work such as inspecting companies previous projects. I think the worst thing to arise from the eNaTIS saga is that developers in the country are being given a bad name by one single company. Joe Soap from the general public will never see the true talent we have in this country because all the best developers write and maintain internal systems for local companies and international ones.

There are hundreds of firms in this country that have international clients! The websites are not hosted locally due to excessive broadband prices, but they are developed by South Africans.