NZOSS response to MBIE proposal to extend Government Procurement rules.

carl

We have taken the opportunity to respond to MBIEs discussion document on ‘Extending the Government Procurement Rules to government entities in the New Zealand public sector’. At present the Government Procurement rules are mandatory for around 135 entities in the Government and State Services and are recommended for the rest of the State and Public Sector including around 2,400 School boards and all of the district and regional councils plus a lot of other sundry organisations.

Our response is NO, this is not a good idea as the Procurement Rules for IT have not had the desired effect and have limited competition and innovation to a small number of players bound primarily to a single overseas vendor. We have proposed that the Rules remain as recommended guidance and that more attention is paid to ensuring that the desired better outcomes for Māori, Pasifika,regional businesses, and social enterprises mentioned in the document actually occurs.

What can be done if you apply a little thought.

carl

Some interesting news from a small US based Financial Services organisation... Rather than just pay a US$2 mill. bill for Oracle licenses they believed they weren't getting value for, they've invested in a move to MariaDB Database as a Service, SkySQL. That kind of annual Oracle license charge puts them in the 'Very Large Business or Govt. Dept. in New Zealand' category. The next question of course is if they can do it, why can't the Govt. or Big Business NZ do it as well?