Police authority loves Sprint ii buying regime West Midlands Police Authority (WMPA) has retracted claims that the Sprint ii procurement agreement was more expensive than other options. The controversial single-supplier pan-public sector agreement has been much maligned since police forces in England and Wales were mandated to use it from March. WMPA also questioned …
"In a statement sent to El Reg, an SCC spokeswoman said: “SCC welcomes the full retraction by West Midlands Police Authority and will continue to work with the NPIA to deliver significant cashable and efficient savings for Forces.”"
Of course SCC would welcome any retraction of statements that tell the honest truth about their monopoly on Police related purchasing.
This framework goes against the grain of good, honest and ethical business. It totally excludes the more than capable channel who have successfully provided solutions to the police in the past and have demonstrated value for money too.
Even Dell quote the Sprint II framework T&C's chapter and verse to justify fucking their existing Dell channel partners over in favour of pushing business SCC's way, irrespective of how much work that/those Dell channel partners have put into the deal.
They should perhaps rename this tainted "framework" to Squint II as the persons who formulated must be totally blind
A senior civilian technical expert working for the Met a (long) while back attended a meeting he didn't normally bother to go to and circulated a paper asking why the best equipment his department approved was not being bought and more expensive and inferior quality ones were being selected and issued contrary to the advice of his department.
Not long after he suddently found himself facing CP allegations and lost his job.
Its a dangerous business, being involved with the police. A pity really as like most of the ordinary officers, he was a good public servant.
I've seen first hand the savings that can be made if you negotiate with suppliers and enter into a competitive dialogue via any of the frameworks or going direct, as any private organisation would.
The savings you can make on Sprint ii are massive (more like 30%), fundamentally how can a sole supplier offer best value for money. They arn't even motivated to get you the best price because they have already won the business and even getting a quote is tricky at times.
The only real benefit of this, is that if your IT people are clueless at least you ensure you get a standard price and no one gets robbed. If your employed to manage ICT in any way it’s part of your job to ensure value for money and technical fit within your Enterprise Architecture, if you don’t do this you should be sacked not have to use the framework!
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