Consultants
I hope they get well qualified civil servants, rather than consultants to manage any procurement.
My own experience of being a consultant at one company, was one of the partners telling me that the job of a consultant is to find out the client's budget and spend it.
In a different employment I was a member of a bid team to an HMG department wanting a seriously large ICT system. On a trip to the client it became evident to me that the consultants running the procurement bid process were just trying to prolong it to line their own pockets. The senior member of their 'team' entered the room, said something along the lines of 'how about we change it in [this fundamental way]?' and walked out, expecting a serious change to be evaluated in half an hour. He returned later that day to change the same area to yet another possibility and left without listening to any response from us. The client should have cancelled the bid and done a serious requirements analysis, but that would have meant the bid process management consultants being out of a job, and that would have cost them money, so they would never recommend it. In the end we 'no bid' due to completely unrealistic bid requirements.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
