Government Procurement
WRITTEN ON Saturday, March 18th, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Government Procurement
Ruth Loebl from RNIB writes in on the question of government procurement: Perhaps I’m taking this into a different realm, but I am extremely interested in govt procurement at the moment, due to the introduction of a new Public Sector Duty to promote disability equality (a new bit of the existing Disability Discrimination Act), enforceable […]
CONTINUE READING - LEAVE A COMMENT (1)
WRITTEN ON Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Government Procurement
Apparently – says the excellent Outlaw.com – the US and EU have resolved a government procurement sanctions dispute that has been going since 1993. I wasn’t even aware of it. Has it been a big deal? Have we been penalising US companies on smaller contracts?
CONTINUE READING - Comments Off on EU-US public procurement trade dispute “over”
WRITTEN ON Friday, February 24th, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Government Procurement
Lance Piper notes good suppliers often have to launder their bids through an OGC-listed supplier that often adds little value I maybe don’t feel as strongly as you – so given that that OJEC rules are unlikely to change – my anecdote only relates to the OGC Lists. A project decided to invite a tender […]
CONTINUE READING - Comments Off on OGC lists that create unnecessary middlemen
WRITTEN ON Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Government Procurement
Here’s the 2003 state of the art guidance on all this stuf from OGC. In brief, the NAO/OGC warning signs for senior management on common causes of project failure are 1. Lack of clear link between the project and the organisation’s key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success. 2. Lack of clear senior management […]
CONTINUE READING - Comments Off on OGC good procurement guidance from 2003 (If you don’t know what you’re doing, just say “No”
WRITTEN ON Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Government Procurement
Can someone remind me why there were such dark rumours around project True North? Or is there some legal settlement which means it can’t be spoken of? I do recall people speaking in outraged tones about this, but I’ve forgotten what they said. And what’s all this about the MoD applying DefStan requirements to packs […]
CONTINUE READING - Comments Off on Good and bad procurements, and dark rumours
WRITTEN ON Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Government Procurement
A significantly-placed friend writes in to suggest it’s important we date our anecdotes. Central Gov has performed better (I think) since Gershon created OGC. Stuff from four of five years ago is not necessarily relevant today. My correspondent recalls submitting evidence to Peter Gershon’s original study for the PM. I had asked my team to […]
CONTINUE READING - LEAVE A COMMENT (1)
WRITTEN ON Thursday, 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 […]
CONTINUE READING - LEAVE A COMMENT (1)
WRITTEN ON Wednesday, 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 […]
CONTINUE READING - LEAVE A COMMENT (3)
WRITTEN ON Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Government Procurement
The Invigilator John R Behrman writes in with a “classic case of sub-optimization” in government procurement: “trying to do incrementally better that which should not be done at all”: a) Procurement of direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines and deployment of a “statewide voter role” (actually the same as your “National Identity Card”) here in Texas […]
CONTINUE READING - LEAVE A COMMENT (7)
WRITTEN ON Wednesday, 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. […]
CONTINUE READING - Comments Off on Procurement: it’s OK really, but we need higher EU thresholds
