Online registration crisis continues
As more skeletons continue to tumble out of the closet Application fails despite operating at abnormal 64 gigabytes instead of 32
Skeletons are tumbling out of the closet, exposing the shortcomings of an online application system developed by a company that was awarded a tender by the Department of Tertiary Education Financing ( DTEF) to register tertiary students seeking government loans.
The system is simply flawed and a great embarrassment to the Education system. For two weeks the students have not been able to either successfully register or get a concrete response.
Embarrassingly, the collapse of the application system is sending wrong information to students, creating panic, as some are receiving confirmation letters from institutions that they never applied to, while others are getting rejection notices or messages indicating that the quota has been reached.
Others are receiving mobile contacts of officials where they can send their details and specify their queries. Others are receiving notice that the Department is reviewing their rejected status and feedback will be given via text.
IT experts told this publication that the choice of technology to develop the system is questionable saying for example, despite the Application Server requiring 64 Giga Bytes instead of the normal 32GB it is unable to scale up. Furthermore, they question the flexibility of the technology. The question that needs to be answered is whether the company that developed the application is competent enough for work of such magnitude.
The tender in question was awarded for the development of a software application for the online registration for students seeking government loans to a local company called Agaileum Pty Limited.
Although some are locally based, most of the co- developers of the software are in Mauritius.
Originally and in line with government protocol and procedures, DTEF approached the Development of Information Technology ( DTI) in the Ministry of Transport and Communication seeking assistance.
DTEF was referred to the Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation ( BITRI) to ask to be hosted because of their experience and exposure as they developed and host the famous e- Gov portal.
Subsequent to an agreement to host DTEF server at BITRI, an Invitation to Tender ( ITT) with a direct appointment for BITRI to host was issued, but nothing conclusive was reached.
Following that the application was launched. However, more specifications of the Application, which were to be done in three parts; Application Server, Data Base server, and Web Server were sought by BITRI.
Although the system was tested by both DTEF and the consultant, it started being porous and turned into a disaster at a time when it was needed most - when prospective students were making their applications.
After this development, BITRI provided higher specifications for the servers that were originally requested. In order to ensure that there were no further disturbances the DTEF server was made a standalone in order for them to get more resources.
Experts say that for the Database, DTEF had requested for a four- core, but were given 16- cores. While for RAM, DTEF had asked for 32. For the Web, DTEF had requested for two- core, but was furnished with one that has capacity of 10.
Reports indicate that in total, DTEF had asked for 10 cores across all the servers and were provided with 46, while in the memory RAM they asked for 80 cores, and were furnished with 112 GB.
IT experts who spoke to this publication said they do not necessarily think that the big issue is around server resources, but, instead point out that the issue seem to be in the software itself.
They say looking at how the system collapses once students try to log in, indications are that the software seems to be consuming far more resources than normal, and this possibly is a result of a system which is not optimised.
It was discovered during the monitoring stage that optimisation was not done on the application in view of the fact that each time the resources are increased to enhance utilisation, the application kept on demanding more.
This led to BITRI experts engaging the Developers of the system. They are still working on it. Among the shortcomings which were picked, the data base size was found to be abnormal, and the system could be tied to others.
BITRI Chief Executive Officer, Professor Shedden Masupe could not be drawn into discussing the matter save to say, “our role in the DTEF online registration application is to host”.
Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology, Dr. Douglas Letsholathebe said students are not supposed to be placed within institutions that they have not applied to, further reiterating that they do not have quotas for institutions. He referred this publication to DTEF.
Director of DTEF, Neo Sebolao confirmed that they are being hosted by BITRI because the DIT did not have space at the time when the consultant wanted to develop the application.
She confirmed that the application is experiencing problems and this is impacting on students.
“We owned that we have a problem with memory and have been working on it”. She said since last Friday the system has been provided with capacity of 64 gigabytes, and they are currently monitoring it through BITRI.
“It is not true that the system is not working. The problem of memory is sorted out and satisfactorily working”, she said, adding that, “we have sent applicants emails to send their queries so that executive decisions can be done”.
Sebolao confirmed that so far, they are at about 70 percent admission, as approximately 6000 students out of targeted 8000 have been confirmed.
She explained that about 800 applicants were rejected of which about 300 are genuine. She said based on the complaints that they are receiving it is evident that they need to be more aggressive in public education.