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

From the perspective of the UK local government organisation I’ve worked in recently, and for ICT expenditure running into £six figures, I’ve always found the Council’s procurement processes entirely acceptable – they are after all looking after public money, so perhaps need to be less flexible than can be the case in the private sector.

Where I have deep concerns is with the relatively modest limits* beyond which procurement has to be advertised in the Official Journal of the EU and a rigid process followed thereafter. The problem, for ICT projects, is that this necessarily adds significant delay so conflicting with any possibility of rapid rollout of new eGovernment services. Relative to the cost of the procured contract, the cost of following the process can be significant for contracts close to the threshold too The OGC has done a great job with Catalist in providing a solution that is particularly good for established products and services from large companies. However where a new eGovernment service necessitates use of a product produced by a recently-formed company or where the supplier has not previously seen it worthwhile to engage in the Catalist tendering process, the only option to procure quickly is to buy through a Catalist-listed organisation who understandably demand a percentage of the contract value for fronting it.

I’m no procurement expert. However I would have thought that one or both of adding a middle tier to the EU procurement legislation that enabled faster/cheaper procurement for medium value goods & services, or finding a way of getting new suppliers onto Catalist quicker, would solve many of these concerns.

*Just checking on the recently updated thresholds, note that the OGC web page covering these http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1004560 is currently blank!

Charles