When Governments and other public sector bodies carry out procurement they are meant to follow a specific pattern of behaviour that is designed to enable businesses and even charities in some cases to prepare their efforts to ensure that as many credible suppliers as possible can compete. One of the elements of a public procurement process that is often used is called a PIN or Prior Information Notice. By issuing this notice the public body (or Contracting Authority) can substantially reduce the timescale of their procurement arrangements, as the PIN is used to gather interested parties which are supposed to respond to the PIN, and then they may be the only agencies approached when the full contract is published. Because the PIN has pre warned them of the larger process, they are expected to respond more rapidly than if the PIN is not utilised.
David Lidington is the Minister of the Cabinet Office, and often referred to as Theresa May’s right hand man. His is name is the name on the first page of the PIN above. As can be seen above there is no description or documents that explain what is proposed and the successful companies will help to shape what the final arrangement looks like once they have been awarded their contracts. The rest of the pages explain the following:
The main items included in this contract are:
| 30200000 | Computer equipment and supplies | Office and computing machinery, equipment and supplies except furniture and software packages |
|---|
The contract will have a: Value excluding VAT: 5 000 000 000.00 GBP (£5Bn)
There is a short description for this contract which states:
CCS, working with other departments and partner public buying organisations, aims to provide a market leading commercial solution for commodity technology product and associated service requirements. The resulting contract will drive value, benefits and savings for the public sector and support customers through digital transformation.
Further details of this procurement and our stakeholder engagement can be found here: https://ccs-agreements.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/node/7339
For the avoidance of doubt any competitive activity resulting from this Notice will focus on establishing a procurement route for commodity technology products and associated services.
Based on todays check on that link above one arrives at the page which explains:
Technology Products 3
Scope
The Technology Products 3 agreement will be the supply of commodity technology goods and/or closely-related services for use by UK public sector organisations. It replaces Technology Products 2 (RM3733), which is due to expire October 2018.
The current scope & Lot structure is……..
and after describing what is in technology products, the page then explains:
Important links
We will update the important links below, at each stage of the project, adding to this page as information for buyers and suppliers is released.
| Prior Information Notice (PIN) in OJEU | PIN has not yet been published |
|---|---|
| Contract Notice in OJEU | Contract notice has not yet been published |
| Download tender documents | Tender documents are not yet available |
So bearing in mind that the PIN has been published and it led us to the page in the first place, there are some missing pieces of this rather convoluted and bizarre jigsaw which is clearly incapable of preparing any company to carry out a bid or tender for the work that the Government claims it has in mind, but in reality is worse than a finger in the air. It is vital for David Lidington to put this right by providing a great deal more information on the website as a matter of priority!
ianchisnall 