South Wales Evening Post - 13 June 2007
An investigation to see if any senior Swansea Council staff should be disciplined over the way an £83 million IT contract was handled will take evidence from Councilor Rene Kinzett.
The chairman of the council's performance scrutiny board has been asked to give his views on the deal with Swansea-based IT firm Capgemini. It follows a damning report by the council's own auditors into the controversial deal.
It found that a number of things should have been done differently to ensure council tax payers got the best value for money. Audit firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers said that more should have been done to look at cheaper alternatives and proposed savings should have been better scrutinised.
The firm also said that senior councillors were not kept properly informed and it is this allegation that forms the basis of the internal investigation.
Councillor Kinzett, whose scrutiny committee is also looking at the deal, said he expects his evidence to be among the last given to the inquiry.
He said: "I have been asked to give evidence in my role as chairman of the performance scrutiny board - we are looking at the IT and have been doing so for some months.
"We have gathered evidence and asked questions and I will be able to pass that on to the independent person who is conducting the inquiry. I expect he will have already spoken to most of the people he wants to by the time I give my evidence, and will be close to the end of the investigation."
The performance scrutiny board was due to meet at 4.30pm today at County Hall.
