Back in February there were allegations made by the Competition Bureau that some technology services firms had engaged in "bid rigging."
"The Bureau says in a release that it has found evidence indicating that several IT services companies in the National Capital Region secretly co-ordinated their bids in an illegal scheme to defraud the government by winning and dividing contracts, while blocking out honest competitors."
It should be noted that these allegations are still to be proven in court, which of course could take years. True or not, the reputation of these firms has been damaged for the long term.
Yet the bigger question here is how could this happen? Let's face it, anyone who has ever dared to respond to a government RFP is inundated with pages upon pages of doc
umentation, which even for relatively simple items can range well over 100 pages! So how is it that someone could engage in bid rigging, in a "bid rigorous" system.
The more you try to address every potential eventuality in an RFP document, the greater the chance for finding ways around it. Because let's face it, when things are kept simple then the opportunity to unveil ne'er-do-well activity is a little easier. I'm not saying go back to the handshake scenario, but we have gotten mired down in so much paper and evaluation that at the end of the day it has become somewhat self-defeating.
I know that it may sound contraindicated -- the greater the complexity to ensure compliance the easier it is to defeat the system, but think about it. When you have limited resources and limited time to come to a decision aren't the pressures going to result in just a cursory review, as opposed to a more indepth analysis.
I understand the need for diligence when the public's money is being spent...however, are our tax dollars being spend effectively when we are propping many jobs in the public sector, just because we have gotten so "scared" about the possibility of a misstep?
Missteps are occuring every day within organizations that allow themselves to be buried in outdated protocol vs. reality. And, as the story from Ottawa demonstrates, you are not eliminating the opportunity for unethical behaviour. Furthermore, to this point, we have seen, regulators like the SEC doesn't keep the world from becoming victims of folk like Bernie Madoff. In fact, it makes us more vulnerable, because we have the misguided sense that we are being protected.
Goes back to the old KISS adage, "Keep it Simple Stupid!" Hopefully sometime soon we will see a rennaissance in government structures to ensure this happens and our public monies are being spent effectively, better decisions are being made faster, and unethical behaviour is uncovered quickly....
Now that's something to hope for-- but I won't be holding my breath!
It should be noted that these allegations are still to be proven in court, which of course could take years. True or not, the reputation of these firms has been damaged for the long term.
Yet the bigger question here is how could this happen? Let's face it, anyone who has ever dared to respond to a government RFP is inundated with pages upon pages of doc
umentation, which even for relatively simple items can range well over 100 pages! So how is it that someone could engage in bid rigging, in a "bid rigorous" system.The more you try to address every potential eventuality in an RFP document, the greater the chance for finding ways around it. Because let's face it, when things are kept simple then the opportunity to unveil ne'er-do-well activity is a little easier. I'm not saying go back to the handshake scenario, but we have gotten mired down in so much paper and evaluation that at the end of the day it has become somewhat self-defeating.
I know that it may sound contraindicated -- the greater the complexity to ensure compliance the easier it is to defeat the system, but think about it. When you have limited resources and limited time to come to a decision aren't the pressures going to result in just a cursory review, as opposed to a more indepth analysis.
I understand the need for diligence when the public's money is being spent...however, are our tax dollars being spend effectively when we are propping many jobs in the public sector, just because we have gotten so "scared" about the possibility of a misstep?
Missteps are occuring every day within organizations that allow themselves to be buried in outdated protocol vs. reality. And, as the story from Ottawa demonstrates, you are not eliminating the opportunity for unethical behaviour. Furthermore, to this point, we have seen, regulators like the SEC doesn't keep the world from becoming victims of folk like Bernie Madoff. In fact, it makes us more vulnerable, because we have the misguided sense that we are being protected.
Goes back to the old KISS adage, "Keep it Simple Stupid!" Hopefully sometime soon we will see a rennaissance in government structures to ensure this happens and our public monies are being spent effectively, better decisions are being made faster, and unethical behaviour is uncovered quickly....
Now that's something to hope for-- but I won't be holding my breath!
1 comment:
If you think most government employees enjoy the complexity of the average Request For Proposal (RFP), you're seriously mistaken. From the government's point of view, most RFPs are required to be insanely complex and detailed as a response to suppliers, who will use every single word in the RFP to try and cheat, to gain any financial advantage possible over their customer and over their competition.
Those reams of paper called RFPs are painful to create and deadly boring. I can guarantee most civil servants hate being forced to produce and issue them but if they don't specify every detail of every detail, I can guarantee the suppliers will leap at the opportunity to willfully misinterpret what the government wants and force a comparison of apples to oranges during the evaluation process - to their own financial advantage, of course.
As an example, it would be nice if you could just ask for a quote on microcomputers. If you did, I can guarantee the winning bid would consist of ancient, slow, obsolete technology for every single component, including the damned case! It would be the cheapest bid and if the bureaucrats didn't select it, all hell would break loose.
Of course, when bureaucrats actually do choose the lowest bid, the suppliers still go nuts and claim the bureaucrats are crooks and are giving some unfair advantage to all of the other bidders.
Just try and imagine asking for a straightforward quote on a new, simple, custom computer program. Even with ridiculously detailed RFPs, software that should cost the government a few thousand dollars and take a couple of months to code, ends up costing the government tens of millions of dollars for something they never wanted and doesn't work anyway... ten years later.
That's why it's necessary to supply super-detailed specs on each and every component of everything, down to the last possible detail and even then, I'll guarantee the suppliers will figure out a way to slip in some cheap piece of crap to defeat the entire purpose of the RFP, so their bid is lower.
In this case, the K.I.S.S. principle just doesn't apply. Not even close.
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