SSNIT asked for wrong ICT infrastructure in $66m project

Fresh information suggest the officials of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) simply did not understand what it really wanted when it signed an initial $34m ICT contract to automate its pension administration systems.

It turns out, the $34m infrastructure requested by SSNIT was only good enough for the management of provident fund and not social security.

Joy News' Evans Mensah explained, it was like asking for cricket gears to play football.

"They had specified for a wrong solution and paid for a wrong solution" host of Super Morning Show Nhyira Addo weighed in after two journalists, Evans Mensah and Raymond Acquah had presented the facts as contained in a contract intercepted by Joy News.

With the project defective from the start, the management of SSNIT persisted in finding fresh solutions to the problem. But that came at a costly price which kept on increasing at the expense of pensioners and contributors.

From 2012 to 2016, managers at SSNIT embarked on a desperate exercise ordering for more than six specification changes.

The first change order, September 2013 was for two special HP servers (HP DL385P GEN8 Servers) which came at a cost of $28,500.

Another change order was for an upgrade of servers at a cost of $2.54million.

In November 2013, it ordered for $1.2million worth of "hardware requirements for the digitization of critical legacy documents"

The biggest change was an Operational Business Suite costing $10.23million ordered in June 2014.

Several more changes were required as the technical management at SSNIT appeared to be doing 'on-the-job-experiment with pension funds that appeared to be so unlimited and could be made available on request.

The technical team was also sent to Malaysia to understand the technical processes involved in the project they were trying to implement.

SSNIT also paid $2.2m every year for the software license.

After several changes, three managers at SSNIT had to pat themselves on the back and reported the system was "100%" efficient and fit for the purpose for which it was procured.

Barely a year after the patting on the back ceremony, it has emerged however the entire project is not functioning and the equipment that 'swallowed' the sweat of the pensioneers' contribution is now gathering dust at SSNIT's ICT room.

Meanwhile impeccable sources at SSNIT tell Joy News the price of the fruitless venture could be over $70 million.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com