Government buyers take 22 months on average to procure tech

Public sector technology buyers have the lengthiest average buying cycle of any industry vertical in part due to a lack of vendor specific information on products often hampering the decision making process. According to a survey of 1,120 executives Gartner interviewed in November and December, including 79 from the government …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

So what are the causes of these significant delays?

There is no upside if it goes well - the head of the agency doesn't get a bigger yacht, the civil servants don't get stock options and the minister has moved on to another dept.

If it goes at all badly - then the press rip apart the head of dept and the minister responsible, and the current head and minister who had nothing to do with it.

So the only motivation is to avoid every possible point of blame and ideally drag the process out until some new guy is in charge.

[BOFH in Training]

Re: So what are the causes of these significant delays?

I think you meant when it becomes impossible to avoid and there is a real urgent need NOW due to all the delays.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So what are the causes of these significant delays?

Many - too many interested parties who can throw a spanner in the works/delay the process by just not engaging, inability to access expert users (because ya know they're redlining it doing their day jobs), lack of clear reqs, scope, scope creep, budget (lack of), prioritisation, disinterest, empire building, empire preservation, swiping the legs out from under a competitor. You know, just the usual office politics.

Large scale public sector procurement is like fight club without the rules.

[hoola]

Re: So what are the causes of these significant delays?

Having been on the end of this running large procurements there are a number of issues:

1: Sort out the requirements in a way so that you do not ask for what you want in case you exclude someone. This can take months

2: Send requirements ujp to manglement for review.

3: Write the tender so that you cannot be sued by unsuccessful responses.

4: Add every last piece of minute detail so that it is "fair".

5: Have everyone and their pet dog contribute to the tender document AND review it.

6. Send it to procurement for review, this will go back and forth interminably as they complain about anything that might be specific.

7: If it is large enough it goes to legal where it is re-written and no longer resembles the tender!

8: Send it out to interested parties on a list, many of whom you would never ever want to deal with.

9 Wait some more and answer all the queries

10: Wait some more

11: Start evaluating the responses. They all meet the mandatory requirement because we gave them the answers & most meet the desirable unless they are really stupid responses.

12: Short list by sticking a pin in and look at what you think management want.

13: Send for review and get a completely different list back:

14: Spend a month or so repeating

15: Endless supplier presentations where everything is PowerPoint and lies.

15: Finalise supplier and send out contract award.

16 Dump supplier on the Techies/PMs to now unpick the utter disaster that does not meet the requirements in step 1.

Manglement happy, loads of lunches, golf etc from all the suppliers whilst everyone else tears their hair out.

I may have missed a couple of steps out but this is the general process.

One that really wound me up was a tender for server hardware where we needed to replace 100s of HPe BL480 blade servers using the existing enclosures Apparently we could not specify that the servers had to be HPe as that was anti-competitive. That the enclosures were full of switches and cabled into many racks passed procurement by.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So what are the causes of these significant delays?

Currently trying to (simultaneously, it's that sort of year) work through a procurement pretty much as described and deal with the fallout of another one that has already "delivered" (a train wreck) I just have to ask...

Beer, or something stronger ?

[thondwe]

Re: So what are the causes of these significant delays?

Procurement Teams have processes to select best deals on paper clips or office chairs, but rarely have enough understanding of I.T. to cope with the implications of e.g. changing network switch manufacturer or tenderiung for a Stats package?

Best shortcusts involve frameworks - e.g. "Software - Other Software" - which costs more (middle man), but keeps procurement happy, or G-Cloud which suppliers often "suggest" searches which get the answer you first thought of!

[Terry 6]

Re: So what are the causes of these significant delays?

Also add that the suppliers see a government agency as nice field to harvest, so both play hard ball in negotiation and make a terrible fuss if they don't get the contract. Which has political ramifications that private contracts don't.

[Secondrule]

Re: So what are the causes of these significant delays?

.. and their lawyers are better paid and more motivated than public sector ones ..

[gandalfcn]

Re: So what are the causes of these significant delays?

All true, other than when you want to bung a few million the way of your mates.

[Scott Broukell]

Trussed me, for I have a plan: Nadine Dorries and Lady Harding (and some really nice whizzo chums), are going to develop this oven-ready, block-chain, algorithm Web App thingy that uses ML and AI and any other old IT buzzword shit that is doing the rounds at the moment, and it will solve procurment problems at a stroke!

It will all be delivered under budget and delivered in record time and also deliver wads of lovely cash to said chums!

Delivery wil be all important in order to make delivery work and delivering this crock of shit will mean that you know exactly what you are going to get delivered from this all-new Trussed-worthy administration! So concentrate really hard on the delivery and maybe not so much the end product will ya!

[drand]

Well done, this post really delivered.

[43300]

I hope there will be a role for lots of well-paid management and project consultants in there!

[Boris the Cockroach]

And the single technical person who fails to get the whole system running is fired for poor performance while the tech side is outsourced to a company based abroad owned by the minister's other 1/2 ..........

[Dacarlo]

You forgot SD-WAN so I can no longer take you seriously as a purveyor of wanton IT buzzwordery.

[Anonymous Coward]

which public sector ?

Call me an old cynic, but this reads like a story about the US with a quick mention of the UK in the final paragraph to imply it is relevant over here.

[Dr Scrum Master]

Re: which public sector ?

Yep, El Reg is sadly becoming increasingly Merkinised.

[Terry 6]

Re: which public sector ?

It does, but the impression I've got from what I've observed and heard is that similar ( though maybe not so severe?) issues exist in the UK too. Maybe it's universal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: which public sector ?

... it sadly is

[Headley_Grange]

Re: which public sector ?

It's also pretty context free in terms of what "tech procurement" means. 22 months to buy a printer would be very bad - although I'm sure someone will pop-up with worse times for UK local Gov. However, to spec., vendor pre-qualify, compete, evaluate tenders, adjudicate and negotiate a contract for, say, a new nationwide Highway Management System in less than 22 months could be in the ballpark of "not bad", especially if a bit of time is allowed for legal challenges.

[Youngone]

Re: which public sector ?

Which public sector ? is a fair question.

I work for a vast American corporation and recognise all of the same frustrations commentards are pointing out here, except no minister to take the blame.

22 months delay makes them amateurs in the delay game. I've been waiting 6 year for my replacement phone system.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: which public sector ?

22 month is the average! From a new printer, which is probably less than a month if there is a fixed procedure to a few month. For the phone system, which is a somewhat big thing, 6 years sounds like a lot, but it sounds like "within the normal scope". 10 years would be unusual.

I work as a consultant to finally replace quite a number of Server 2008 R2 in the public sector, which is combined with a restructuring to get quite some IT more centralized to save money in the long run.

That includes some 2003 R2, which have to be replace with followup system which HAVE to support SMB1 since scientific measurement devices, which cost several 100K, have to be kept working. DMZ-ed of course, but they must continue to work.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: which public sector ?

To me this is 1:1 Germany too. Including busybody/blowhard people want to make their mark with a project, but it fails and they disappear into Insignificance (well, Schröder with Nordstream did not 100% disappear, but he should have). And the project must be continued on since it already went too far. See new Berlin airport, Stuttgart 21, and and and and.....................................................................................................

What's your list in the other side of the channel (excluding the obvious issue that blond one created and all of Britain have to carry the can for)?

[Tron]

Allow me to help.

Replace the word 'government' with 'incompetent' and all of this suddenly makes sense.

[An_Old_Dog]

At a Quasi-Gov't Institution

... where I worked, it was highly-variable. For desktop and laptop PCs, and printers, we had a set of standard devices which I had tested for compatibility. We had a website which made it easy for departments to order standard configs (but they could customize). IT had a set of minimum CPU, RAM, and disc we would support. You could have PCs, and you could have Apples. The minimum HW specs minimized IT dealing with old, underpowered kit.

Network Services specced and ordered their own servers, which were mostly-homogeneous.

Vertical vendor stacks were mostly departmentally-driven; IT was either ignored, or lightly-consulted for those. (Vertical-market vendors hated IT and did their best to exclude us.)

Research mostly did whatever the hell they wanted.

Enterprise-wide software, mainframes, and minicomputers were chosen by management at multiple levels above me. IT worker-bees like me never were consulted about those. (I had heard rumors that several of those enterprise-wide software acquisitions, and an enterprise-wide hardware replacement/decree [Ethernet cards, 8K+ PCs] were lubricated by financial incentives to those executives.)

The formal RFP, etc. process was used only the big stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than the alternative

Where we remove the government regulations and all work is doled out to friends or spouses of <fill in the blank>.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Better than the alternative

You are aware that this is one of the policies our new Idiot In Chief intends to promote?

[JimC]

Regulation

In my experience in the UK tendering regulation had a huge impact. We used to joke that corruption would be cheaper than the measures to prevent it. Trouble is both corruption and bureaucratic regulation have a tendency to get out of control and escalate beyond reason.

[Flywheel]

lack subject matter experts

This isn't confined to IT matters though - the whole Government relies on vested interests and brown envelopes. SMEs can rarely offer anything other than knowledge which apparently goes against fueling the Gravy Train.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: lack subject matter experts

Jeezus - everyone here is fucking obsessed with brown envelopes, backhanders and seems to think that corruption is endemic.

It's not corruption it's pay: pay peanuts, get monkeys. Therefore decisions take longer and cost more.

Pay more and give *real* decision making control to managers then you'd get corrupt decision makers at a lower level decision making and speed more like a commercial organisation.

But they don't and never will. So articles like these will continue forever. Get over it.

[hamiltoneuk]

Interesting article. In the UK now we have Ms. Hecate Hardbroom in charge will public spending be slashed? I hate having to wait and see...

[Spanners]

will public spending be slashed?

It depends on whose SO has shares in what.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Result: You will lose the last capable heads in the public sector and will be left with whatever is left.

Why should it be better than anywhere else...