USD $3M DVLA Contract Ballooned To $10-million...…Why DVLA Is Not Printing

Credible information available to this media house indicates that a contract for Foto-X, a private consultancy firm to help automate operations of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) was ballooned to a whooping US$ 9.97 million from the sum of US $ 3.6 million.

The DVLA has consequently set up a board sub-committee to investigate the matters of concern, including how the Three Million, Six Hundred Thousand US dollar ($3.6million) metamorphosed into a whooping Nine Million, Nine Hundred and Seventy Six Thousand, Two Hundred and Nine US dollars and Fifty Cents ($9,976,209.50).

Meanwhile, Foto-X had had an initial contract signed in July 2006,under the watch of Joseph Osei-Wusu, at the sum of 2.77 million dollars.

The contract was to enable the DVLA to move from paper permanent driver license booklets to plastic Driver License Cards, and so outsourced the card printing contract to FotoX Limited/Digimarc.

According to the terms of the 2006 contract, Foto-X was required to implement a turn-key driver license card printing system that would improve the efficiency in the licensing and tracking system of DVLA.

The contract was intended to last for a period of 72 months (six years), and expired some time in 2012.

Before the contract expired, Foto-X applied for a contract extension which was opposed by the management because Foto-X could not meet the terms of the contract, since the printing system Foto-X implemented could not meet the expectation of the DVLA management.

The system could for example, not detect duplication, impersonation or the production of fake licenses, a situation that has consigned DVLA to the manual verification of the validity of the licenses it issues.

As a result of this failure, the DVLA now claims to have over 10,000 printed cards whose validity it has been trying to verify manually.

In order to deal with operational challenges of DVLA in a comprehensive manner the licensing authority awarded a contract to Engineering systems and Services Limited, a Ghanaian technology firm in 2008, with the expressed intension to acquire the capacity to operate its own end-to-end online services and automated system, including the printing services it outsourced to Foto-X.

However, just before the automated service was lunched Foto-X requested for a service renewal at a contract sum of 3.6 million which then ballooned to 9.97 million dollars.

Although this was agreed to by the then Chief Executive Justice Amegashie other Management members opposed it on the basis that DVLA had already purchased its own equipment and implemented an online system that was superior to, and yet cost less than what Foto-X was offering.

Sources at the licensing authority have told myakoben.com that the new Chief Executive, Rudolph Beckley, like his predecessor, has taken a stance in support of a renewed contract for Foto-X.

Meanwhile, the contract sum has ballooned to 9.97 million dollars from the original sum of 3.6 million dollars.

This has pitched Mr. Beckley against the management, and the ensuing tag of war between him and management is the main stumbling block to DVLA’s issuing permanent Driver Licenses with its own systems.

Source: www.myakoben.com