REVAMPING OF ONEMOTORING WEBSITE (Cost)

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REVAMPING OF ONEMOTORING WEBSITE:

(Cost): 5.

Mr Steve Chia Kiah Hong asked the Minister for Transport how the OneMotoring website could have cost $5 million for it to be revamped.

Dr Balaji Sadasivan (for the Minister for Transport): Sir, Mr Steve Chia asked about the cost for revamping the One Motoring website. First, let me clarify that the new One Motoring portal is a merger of three separate existing portals, namely, the One.motoring, Traffic.smart and OnePay Hub portals. These portals provide useful services such as information on COE bids and car numbers available for bidding, road tax renewal, real-time traffic information and electronic payment options for fines and administrative fees. Collectively, they have more than two million page views and handle more than 300,000 online transactions per month.

As the contracts for the hosting and operation of these three portals will expire this year, LTA took the opportunity to consolidate them for greater synergy and, at the same time, derive possible commercial benefits by outsourcing them to the private sector. A tender was called by LTA, and Green Dot Internet Services Pte Ltd (GDIS) won the contract.

Today, LTA incurs a cost of $6.3 million for hosting, operating and maintaining the three portals separately for a period of five years. The new 5-year

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contract will cost a total of $3.9 million or $780,000 annually. This represents a cost saving of about 40% for LTA, or about $500,000 annually. The remaining $1.1 million is a budget set aside under the contract for future enhancements that may be needed. It will only be payable as and when the enhancements are identified and implemented.

Hence, the new contract amount represents a significant cost saving over the current cost of running the three portals separately. In addition, integrating the three portals into one will make it more convenient for motorists, the motoring industry and members of the public, as they only need to go to one single site for a whole range of comprehensive motoring and traffic information.

Mr Steve Chia Kiah Hong (Non-Constituency Member): Sir, I would like to thank the Minister of State for the answer and for the effort to actually merge the three websites into one and to facilitate users.

Since it is implemented as three websites merged into one and the tender has been called, what are the next three bids from the tenderers who tendered for this contract? I suppose Green Dot is actually the most expensive tender in this case, why was it selected?

Dr Balaji Sadasivan: Sir, he assumes wrongly!

Twenty companies purchased the tender documents. Companies such as Satyam Computer Services, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft (Singapore), etc, bought the tender documents. Two companies finally submitted their tenders. Of the two, Green Dot submitted the lower tender.