WRITTEN ON February 23rd, 2006 BY An Industry Executive AND STORED IN Government Procurement

A core aim of the OGC is to improve purchasing across government. But its own purchasing frameworks (run by OGCbuying.solutions) are an embarassing example of worst case practice, which generate huge amounts of work for all involved, with a low quality outcome.

Specifically, the competition to get into the new Catalist series of frameworks is being run as a box-ticking exercise in which it is more important to get the word count right than to be innovative or have an enviable track-record.

The criteria for winning a place on the frameworks are based on a complex and mechanical scoring system, where there is little or no scope for an intelligent evaluation based on the overall value of what the bidder can bring. Some examples of the kind of unnecessary things which are asked are as follows: administrative back-up sfatt for consultants; degrees of all consultants (with 1.0 points for a degree, 1.4 for an MA and 1.6 for a doctorate); details of joiner training policies; how to ensure the timeliness of sales information given to the OGCbuying.solutions; sales order system process etc etc.

In answering the huge number of (largely unnecessary) questions, one senses a desperate need at the other end (in OGCbuying.solutions) to ask questions about processes because of a lack of capability to evaluate actual delivery capability.

In case you are wondering, this is not a disgruntled gripe from an unsuccessful bidder. We have done well on Catalist so far.