Source www.microscope.co.uk
By Karl Flinders
13th December 2004
Microscope
The OGC will support government departments with two model contracts for IT product and services procurement, which will also reduce the supplier-side responsibility for project failures. As well as calls from the supplier community, a government report also led to the revamp.
John Kenyon, assistant director of contract innovation at the OGC, said the new contracts would move the responsibility for contract failures away from the suppliers in many cases.
"The risk should go to the party that can best manage it, rather than saying the supplier should manage all the risks, as it was in the bad old days," Kenyon said.
He also said that in the past there was a tendency for the public sector to purchase IT as a group to get lower prices — which had favoured big suppliers — but public sector bodies would now be encouraged to take a value for money approach. The new model contracts are available free of charge and are aimed to help smaller suppliers get involved in public sector sales.
"Small suppliers have an important role in terms of niche skill and we hope this will encourage more of them sell into this market. It will mean small suppliers will no longer have to engage lawyers to write complex contracts," Kenyon added.
Kelvin Brain, director of consultancy at reseller Compusys, said anything that helped smaller suppliers get into the public sector was a good move.
"Technology changes every 18 months and smaller suppliers can react to this more quickly. Small resellers are the innovators, so the public sector will miss out if it does not get their niche skills," he commented. |