Portal set to open up government sector
Joint online venture by OGC and SBS to list public-sector tenders
Larger firms will no longer be able to ride roughshod over small channel players and grab all of the lucrative public-sector contracts, once a venture by two government bodies comes to fruition.
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and the Department of Trade and Industry's Small Business Service (SBS) have teamed up to create a national web portal designed to give SME resellers a slice of the £28bn public sector. The portal will list all available UK public-sector contracts up to a value of £100,000.
Last week the two organisations launched the official tendering process for the creation of the portal, which was given the green light after two successful pilot schemes, in the West Midlands and Haringey.
Rhyddid Carter, an SBS representative, said: "There are 9.6 million contracts available each year. Smaller firms are quite capable of fulfilling these contracts, but they haven't had the chance to compete in the past. This portal will open up the marketplace and give more value to the public sector."
OGC representative Martin Day said the new portal will benefit both resellers and contractors.
"Resellers need to register only once and can then bid for as many contracts as they like. It will speed up the process because they can detail their particular skills, creating a kind of one-stop shop for contractors," he said.
Bob Jones, managing director of SME appliance manufacturer Equiinet, welcomed the move.
"The UK government has been very slow to react. The US has had a scheme like this in place for years; it's called Set Aside, and it allows a certain percentage of a public-sector contract to go to smaller firms. We need to make sure the government delivers by lobbying hard, but this is a good start," he said.
James Governor, principal analyst at RedMonk, criticised the current tendering system.
"Big firms have a major advantage in selling to the government sector, but they keep failing. Project after project is a failure, and billions of pounds of taxpayers' money is wasted," he said.
"Anything that allows smaller firms with more focused skills to work on these projects is good. The big-bang vendor approach has led to shambles and waste."