VARs criticise public-sector e-auctions
Government methods are not helping SME bids for public contracts
Resellers have criticised government methods for ensuring that public-sector IT contracts are not all swallowed up by the giants of the industry.
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) last month committed itself to ensuring that smaller firms, such as resellers, win more public-sector contracts.
But speaking at the Government Computing Conference last week, officials from the OGC said e-auctions will be the favoured method of attracting small businesses to bid for public-sector contracts.
"We need a level playing field for SMEs," said Hugh Barrett, chief executive of OGC procurement unit OGCbuying.solutions. "E-auctions give us an effective way of getting them involved."
John Oughton, OGC's chief executive, endorsed the view, and said he wants to see more prime contractors using e-auctions after winning initial public-sector contracts. "We're not advocating e-auctions for everything. But where it is appropriate - in areas such as IT - we want to see greater use," he said.
However, this means resellers are being asked to bid for repeatable commodity items, but could be excluded from higher-value service contracts, said John Griffiths, consultant at VAR cScape.
"E-auctions are great for 'nuts and bolts' contracts, but there comes a point where it's not suitable - consulting services, for example - where some of the softer issues, such as skills, come into the equation," he said.
If the government is to come good on its pledge to embrace resellers, it needs to spend more time examining how it notifies the community about opportunities, Griffiths added.
"There are lots of contracts with values just below the European (tendering) threshold. These are exactly the types of opportunities that resellers can thrive on, but they never get to hear about. Usually to win public-sector business, resellers have to do a lot of chasing," he said.