IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

Das Amt für Technik und Beschaffung (ATB) der Landespolizei Mecklenburg-Vorpommern kauft ab sofort in einem Testverfahren für alle Polizeibehörden des Landes online ein.

Bwired is an empowered telecommunications service provider that has a strong focus on answering the need for broadband ser
vices, mainly in underserviced areas. It was formed after Ericsson South Africa was 
awarded the billion-rand Johannesburg Broadband Network Project in March last year. The first phase of the project began in April 2009 and should be completed over three years. The vision is to establish a citywide, high-speed broadband network that should ultimately stimulate socioeconomic development throughout the city.

Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) has launched an integrated online platform which will ease the procurement of public goods and services by the government and its institutions.

“When we improve on the procurement process in government institutionsm, both at the central and local government levels, this enables the government to deliver quality social services in time to its citizens. We expect the new ICT portal will address that in the next coming financial year which will start on 1st July 2015,” Professor Simeon Wanyama, the PPDA Board Chair said last week during the launch in Kampala.

The auction launched by The Disposal Sales Agency, part of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), allows potential buyers to bid and pay for ex government items online.

Swansea Council in collaboration with neighbouring Neath Port Talbot has saved the authorities £650,000 over the next five years after securing just one contract via e-Auction.

Swansea's Cabinet meeting endorsed the securing of a contract with a company from Llanelli for tinned and dried foods that will be worth about £1.3m a year.

Local government minister Brian Gibbons agreed £1,500 could be allocated from the Post Office Development Fund to equip two offices with computer equipment.

The partnership with BT Wales, which will match the funding, would allow sub-postmasters and mistresses in rural areas and areas of deprivation to turn their post offices into community broadband hubs.

The value of transactions carried out using the "eProcurement Scotland" system was £1.7 billion in 2007, five times the previous year's total of £321 million. It amounted to almost a quarter of all public sector procurement, which is worth about £8 billion a year.

Millions could be saved by Welsh councils following a successful first eAuction pilot by two local authorities in the Principality.

Swansea and Neath Port Talbot councils secured potential savings of £650,000, equivalent to nine per cent of expenditure for the supply of tinned and dried foods for a contract worth around £1.3 million per year.

Swansea Council claims an online auction collaboration with a neighbouring council could pave the way for other Welsh authorities to save millions of pounds in the procurement of key contracts.

As part of its e-government programme, Swansea worked with Neath Port Talbot Council to procure by online auction a tinned and dried foods supplier for schools in a contract worth £1.3m per year. The auction will save the councils £650,000 over the next five years.

Governments and vendors can learn a lot from each other. The procurement process ought to start long before the RFPs are issued.

Do you remember your first middle-school dance? The boys on one side of the gym, the girls on the other, both too afraid to approach each other. Many of those fears evaporated as we came to know more about each other.

Too often, the government procurement process is like that dance. Government officials are reluctant to engage with potential private-sector vendors outside of the formalized bidding process, fearing that their ethics might be questioned or they might end up spending taxpayer money on products or services that cost too much or don't work as advertised.

When a mid-sized city in the northeastern United States became frustrated with its antiquated accounting processes a few years ago, officials there decided to seek a modern, technology-based solution. Hoping to capitalize on the latest accounting technology while minimizing the city’s investment in new servers and software, they opted to pursue a cloud solution.

Mindful of stringent government procurement rules, the city put together an RFP. But rather than write an RFP from scratch outlining its interest in a cloud-based solution, the city borrowed much of the text from an RFP written years before. The vendors that reviewed the RFP were confused. Here the city was saying it wanted a cloud-based solution, yet its requirements as outlined in the RFP were inconsistent with such a solution. As a result, most of the interested vendors simply did not bid.