Bay in dispute over rights to system with R80m cost to ratepayers
THE Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality is embroiled in a battle with a service provider over who owns the intellectual property of a land information system which cost ratepayers about R80-million in total.
It is unclear if the Integrated Land Information System (ILIS), which is meant to fast-track property rezoning applications, is being used at the moment, as the service provider’s contract to operate the system ended in February.
City Services Management claims that no municipal staff have been trained to run the system and that no other company is legally allowed to use what it insists is its intellectual property.
The municipality, on the other hand, is adamant that the ILIS cannot simply be turned off, due to its user licensing rights, but even if the ILIS was off, the city would still be able to function through “original normal procedures”.
If the system is turned off, this could once again stall rezoning applications, and lead to wasteful expenditure if it is abandoned altogether.
The ILIS is a central database system meant to keep track of all matters involving land in the Bay, including RDP housing pro- jects, land and property leases with the municipality, and ratepayers’ accounts.
The cost of the ILIS on its own was R42-million. This excluded other support functions related to the system, and the refurbishment of the customer information centre, which bumped the figure up to about R80-million.
Senior developer at City Services Management Craig Krummeck said the company’s agreement with the metro was to install the system and train permanent municipal staff to operate it.
“The agreement was that we’d write the solution and the municipality would employ support staff to take over the coding.
“No other third party company is al- lowed to work on the system because it is our intellectual property. Only permanent municipal employees are legally allowed to operate it,” Krummeck said.
After getting the system off the ground in 2013, the municipality extended the company’s contract for a year to give it time to hire staff to run the system.
“When the 12 months were up, they asked us to come for another 12-month period because there were challenges with hiring staff,” Krummeck said.
He claims that there are some municipal officials who are trying to “chuck ILIS out” and get another company on board to develop the municipality’s own housing management system.
“We are not trying to hold the municipality to ransom, but we’re not going to allow another company to come and run our system. All the municipality has to do is hire permanent staff. We need eight months to hand over the system properly to show them how to use it.
“The only way the municipality can use another service provider is if they take out our system and install another one.”
Municipal spokesman Mthubanzi Mniki said there was no support or maintenance contract binding the municipality to the company, and that by extending the contract, the city would contravene its own supply chain management policy and the Municipal Finance Management Act.
“The current challenge is who owns the intellectual property of the ILIS Solution. This issue is being investigated by a team of legal experts. [The] outcome of this issue will directly determine the way forward . . .”
Asked why the city had not kept to its end of the bargain and hired permanent support staff, Mniki said: “Various processes to create a new system support group – to support various systems, including ILIS – are in an advanced stage to source the needed [human resources].”
The service level agreement signed by the municipality and City Services Management states that all intellectual property is owned by the service provider.