Reply to post: The rules mean

The rules mean

The rules mean that NO sme will get a look in - especially British ones

First, the British based SMEs can only offer the civil servants doing the ordering a trip to Barnsley or whatever, this maybe nice enough but clearly not nearly as exciting as all expenses paid trips to the south of France, Munich beer festival (sorry, the Munich office), Las Vegas etc. to 'meet the team', 'discuss technical details', 'thrash out the contract'

Second, and less cynical, the review process always checks multi years of accounts - no startup will qualify as it hasn't enough accounts, no small company can provide the 'guarantee of staying in business'. Of course paying bills on time and escrowing the code etc. would prevent this being an issue but the rule is the rule guvnor

Third and finally, there is always the matter of experience, cap gemini, bt et al as companies have all done projects of the right type scale and magnitude (usually failed to deliver or charged multiple times the original estimate but they did do them). SMEs don't have that, the sme might be a collection of all the people at cap gem who worked on the project but the sme hasn't done the project. Where as cap G have, the fact they will outsource it to Bangalore where no one on the team worked for the company yesterday never mind on the previous projects doesnt matter..

So, government may say things but it continues to operate against UK companies at every turn it can make. Not just in IT but in absolutely everything it ever does.