Where do the procurement staff come from?
One interesting question would be whether the costs of procurement are reduced by having so many private sector contractors working for the procurement agencies, or are they increased?
I retired a few years ago, but worked as a prospective supplier on bids managed by, amongst others, MoD Abbey Wood, the MoJ, the Cabinet Office, and indeed I worked on a bid for e-Borders, though not with Raytheon.
In all these cases, many, if not most, of the procurement staff that we dealt with were contractors, from our competitors. Indeed one question was always "Do we want to put people into that procurement organisation, getting steady money but disqualifying us from bidding for the programmes, or do we take the riskier but potentially much more rewarding approach of bidding for the programmes?".
Biting the hand that feeds IT
