Channel gets nervous over pre-election 'purdah'

Public sector suppliers fear government hiatus will slow down the market

Nerves are setting in among public sector suppliers who fear government IT procurement could grind to a halt in the run-up to the general election.

A so-called "purdah" period refers to the six to eight weeks before an election, during which government bodies are forced to delay decisions until the outcome of the election is clear.

The official guidelines for next year's general election – which is set for 7 May – have yet to be made public, but ahead of the 2010 vote, government rules stated:

"Essential business must be carried on. However, it is customary for... decisions on matters of policy on which a new government might be expected to want the opportunity to take a different view from the present government should be postponed until after the election, provided that such postponement would not be detrimental to the national interest or wasteful of public money."

Reseller Softcat's public sector sales manager Anthony Cowen admitted the purdah will be the biggest short-term impact of next year's general election.

"It is effectively an enforced period of silence that stops central and local government publicly communicating," he said. "This means that new initiatives or policy changes are not allowed air time. In [practice] it means [the] public sector can go quiet for six or more weeks and with a number of new procurement IT framework agreements in the pipeline, this [is] a very real potential problem for the public sector and suppliers alike."

HP – the government's largest supplier – also admitted the near-two-month period would put things on hold.

"We do expect purdah and the period of the general election campaign to create something of a hiatus in the market for a while, in terms of new procurement opportunities, in central government at least," said its regional vice president Stuart Bladen.

Civica's managing director for services Steve Shakespeare said there was no evidence from previous elections to prompt panic now, but admitted he is still concerned about the coming months.

"From around now until the general election, we expect purdah to set in, which will delay decisions on contracts and hence result in a market slowdown," he said. "There also has to be a question mark over whether the existing momentum achieved by the Cabinet Office will be sustained after the election, particularly if a new government is in place.

"This is a personal nervousness really... It may just be my cynical old head coming in, but I will be watching closely. We haven't got any real evidence of [slowdown in the past] but... it is just me and my gut feeling."

Reseller Insight was more optimistic about the purdah period, despite admitting to being worried.

"We are concerned in that it tends to delay the larger projects – people are put off buying stuff because they don't know if they should," said Guy Beaudin, Insight's public sector business development. "But the election is in May so that is six weeks after the end of the government year – resellers such as Insight and others do most of their public sector business in February and March. We should still capture the annual spend."