Government Making Big Money

[JJ70]

As the forum noobie, I never thought I'd get to give any expert advice on here, but then I came accross a post on making BIG money on IT contracts from government. Yeah something in my field.

UK goverment (by government I'm including the whole public sector here NHS etc) advertise for procurement through an number of channels.

Best place to start here Supply2gov.uk - for small contracts less than 100k (yes that is small), same site again probably the best for larger contracts - although you have to pay a subscription.

There are a number of rules on how goverment spend your money - known as a tendering process. The rules chainge mainly on how much money is being spent...under 20K they are pretty lax ....note none of these rules/legislation are set in stone and can be bent.

Procurement legislation (took this from a random Government body but pretty much covers all of the EU):

http://www.haringey.gov.uk/introduction_to_public_sector_procurement.pdf

Basic advice:

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/reso...ector-tenders/

Note work does not always go to the lowest bidder (often does though). IT is not that different from construction etc. What is to stop me putting in the lowest bid to fix streetlights take the government money and go bust in 3 months, or take the money and do a crap job (too much to write on this here)

Yes selling your bids is key. For making big money for very little an HR programme called Oracle is worth a look.

Hmmm hard times at the minute not many contracts. Well put it this way the government is looking at saving money and a vast amount of money is wasted through its IT systems. i.e. if you register a death you have infrom 12 different government agencies - they can't talk to each other!

3 Key White Papers that are a MUST consider for any project or tender:

The Gershon Efficiency Review (2004-2005)
Sir David Varney’s Report on Service Transformation (2005)
the Lyon’s Review (2005)
Also look up Social Return on Investment

Remember you don't need to be a huge company or a developer to make it big (but it helps).

I could make this thread like War and Peace so going to stop here.

JJ

[Clinton]

Nice post, thanks.

This is obviously about getting UK govt contracts.

Aren't there some rules about govt using smaller companies and local companies? How can members here use that to their advantage?

[JJ70]

This is obviously about getting UK govt contracts.

Yes, mostly, but for anything over five figures you can pretty much apply this to the whole of the EU. I could write something US wise but will leave that to one of our friends across the pond as my knowledge on this is only academic.
The White Papers mentioned also fairly respected on a EU level. Social Return on Investment is a massive must for tendering...this is a good inside tip as many of the larger tenders have not cottoned on to using this yet.

Aren't there some rules about govt using smaller companies and local companies? How can members here use that to their advantage?

Sorry but this is a grey area, and is handled differently between authorities and departments. For more info see:

http://www.fsb.org.uk/keeptradelocal...ementlores.pdf

However their is a lot of talk about this (notice talk) in the UK Governments "Big Society".

If anyone is going down any of these routes, feel free to PM me as I'm sure I could give some good qualified advice.

I also have ideas for many workable projects, I might put a thread up on this when I have time.

JJ

[Dave McM]

I'd imagine that the amount of rigour in the tendering process varies quite widely among government departments (both local and central) and other public bodies.

In my own limited experience of handling public money, there wasn't a great deal of rigour. Admittedly we were mostly handing out small amounts of money for local projects. But scrutiny was fairly basic: we invited people to come to us with projects they wanted funding for, shortlisted the best of them, and put them up to our Big Boss. He asked pertinent questions, we answered them, and if he was satisfied, they got the funding. As for follow-up, if they did more or less what they said they were going to, the boxes got ticked and everyone was happy.

I would love to be able to say that the guys in Admin handling the big budgets took a far more rigorous and professional approach, but I would be in danger of exaggerating. Kay and I spent some time overseas and were entitled to a travel budget for breaks away from post. An administrative cock-up meant that the contractors (Amex, as it happened) didn't take taxes into account in the billing process, and we ended up having to pay a fairly hefty whack out of our own pocket. I took this up with Admin but was told that it was my responsibility to ensure that I didn't go over budget. Given that the contractors had failed to provide adequate information in the first place, and had clearly underperformed on their contract (which was up for renewal), I think that was a massive cop-out when the guys responsible for the tender had the perfect opportunity to ask for some kind of compensation or penalty payment for my case and similar ones. As it was, I think they just got told they would have to do better in future, or else. ("Or else what?" I hear you ask. The correct response is probably, "Or else we'll be very annoyed.")
(As it happened, the contract was actually a sub-contract on the back of a far larger contract from the Department for International Development, whose primary purpose is to spend money sensibly to get good results. How scary is that?)

Sorry for the rant - just a long-winded way of saying that public-sector bodies aren't necessarily the most rigorous when it comes to ensuring value for money and water-tight contracting. So yes, I'm sure there's good money to be had from bidding for public contracts, even if you're not in a position to deliver everything they ask - that can just be an "unforeseen contingency", ie an excuse to screw more money out of them.

(I hated having to handle budgets. It wasn't what I went into government to do. Grr!)

[JJ70]

I can confirm that Dave's account of working with government is a very true reflection and not a rant.

For futher consideration - if you get a large contract you would most likely have to work with a "public sector project delivery team" - if any of you have any business savvy you will feel like stabbing yourself to death with a blunt spoon during this proceess. The big consultants Deloitte etc have very thick skins (develop one or you will think the world has gone mad) and consider the money at the end worth it.

On the plus side there are sooooooo many improvements needed that would save a fortune. Remember their MUST be people on here who can produce better products/online services than the current suppliers. And yes government really is that useless (although you would be surprised to hear there of some Extremely talented and capable people working there, many have already stabbed themselves to death with a blunt spoon).

Good business solutions still have a high value (and not just monetary) even in the current economic climate.

JJ

[Clinton]

You may find this funny.

In short, Birmingham police spent 3 million smackers (UKP) on surveillance cameras, some overt and some covert. There were 200 cameras in all (£15,000 each?)

Anyway, they later decided they didn't need some so those were removed and the others were covered by bags. Now they've decided they don't need those either and they'll be coming down too.

None of the cameras was ever switched on. 200 x £15,000 cameras and all we've got for them is a bill to take them down.

On second thoughts, no it ain't funny.

<added> One of the options they are considering as an alternative to scrapping all the cameras "would see the cameras taken down and a smaller scheme implemented using 35 ANPR and 22 CCTV cameras". They never used the cameras they've got and they freaking wanting to buy new cameras! Why do we pay these people, we should be shipping them off to some distant desert island!

[JJ70]

Lol, nope its not (although still chuckling, I don't know why...sob). That makes a good headline.........trust me IT waste is much much worse. Its a billion dollar industry in wasting peoples money.

But there is good stuff too. Take note of the idiots involved in this, and take heart in how much brighter you are. Theres money to be made and good to be done.

JJ

Edit: Doh cameras are IT, but you know what I mean.

[Kay]

Police? Totally clueless when it comes to IT issues.

(Hope I haven't told you this story before, but I didn't find it in the site search.)

I own 101Wales dot com and some other related ones, such as the co.uk and the cymru version). The Welsh Police introduced a new non-emergency 101 phone line and wanted the .com for that. Would I sell? I said sure, I'd consider any reasonable offer they might want to make, and by the way, they could have the other stuff to go with it.

And then... they never even got back to me about what ballpark price we might be talking about. Instead, they went and bought 101Cymru dot net.

I wasn't prepared to give the domain away out of public spiritedness - not when I see how much money they throw away needlessly on other stuff every day.

[Clinton]

I must admit that not all police are that clueless with IT.

When I was running the computer hardware business a few years ago, the serious crimes folk at Scotland Yard were regular customers. We created bespoke solutions for them of server grade machines to do various tasks such as analysing seized hard disks and processing large quantities of security videos. I believe they are still using those machines. I can't say too much about the work we did but the SY boys knew their IT stuff. It was fun working with them.

The fact that they used a small company with a reputation for technical innovation over the safe option of Dell speaks volumes for their savvy. And, I hope, it got them better gear more suited to the job.

[JJ70]

And, I hope, it got them better gear more suited to the job.

This is Key!

And like I pointed out although on the whole government really are that bad, there are some excellent people and projects.

Bit of inside info, there is a good chance we are all (in the UK) going to be seeing more of that 101 number Kate mentioned. It is a very good project in principle.

Just so you know they don't have the IT to make this work the way they want yet, getting all kinds of proposals for the right software being put forward.....in a similar manner to that discussed in this thread.

You heard it here.

JJ

And yes I know 101 has been used and seen as a failure in other areas...but the solution aint that complicated