WRITTEN ON February 22nd, 2006 BY Shane McCracken AND STORED IN Government Procurement

Whilst I understand the need for procurement rules to protect the public purse I do find that they sometimes seem to conflict with innovation.

About 15 months ago we put a proposal to a large City Council for a project called the Community Campaign Pack. We worked with the council at our own risk (both time and money) to pitch for ODPM e-innovations fund money. We were cited as a partner on the bid documents and were successful in getting the funding.

It was at this stage that we were told that the ODPM and council procurement rules would mean that the development work would be tendered and the project management would be taken in house. We were to be offered a QA role on the project board. We refused.

In the end the lack of in-house skills and resources meant that we did end up project managing the majority of the development of the tool, but the vast bulk of the project was taken out of our hands.

I shan’t argue the rights or wrongs of the decisions taken, but the whole process makes it extremely difficult for us to take new ideas to councils and work speculatively with them to try and get funding.

I don’t know the best way around the problem, but expecting companies who invest in innovative ideas to pitch against companies who have not invested the same time and money is not in the long term interest of innovation in the public sector.