'Only £100m companies need apply' procurement cock-up

As part of its ongoing campaign to open up the government procurement market to the small and medium enterprise (SME) supplier base, the Cabinet Office has run a 'mystery shopper' exercise on its behalf - and found some worrying trends.

In the research, problems with problems with procurement systems and some of the processes involved are highlighted as blocking attempts by smaller vendors to secure contracts. Some 23 SME-driven contacts that ran into the sand are highlighted (as in, SMEs told the Office of problems and it investigated for them).

Thus a procurement run by Surrey County Council was derailed by an administration error with the e-procurement system, with the SME getting no response after sending in the notoriously complex pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) and the had difficulty obtaining the required documentation.

In that case, once the Cabinet Office investigated, the council was happy to agree the issue was with the software and not the bid and granted the supplier more time to complete the process.

Doncaster council also failed to see when a PQQ failed to properly download and was hence not evaluated. Again, the authority, once notified, extended the deadline. But the clear implication is that this may be a more common problem than currently appreciated.

The Cabinet Office itself had issues, with a smaller player saying its new Contracts Finder website set up specifically to help SMEs had some search functionality issues. Maude's team says it has noted the complaint and will boost search for a projected November upgrade.

Meanwhile, the Department for Education was knocked for not having central funding for management information systems so as to provide electronic data returns to UK schools, despite the then Becta saying this was necessary last year. The Government Procurement Service (the old Buying Solutions system) is in response working on a new framework agreement to meet this need, says the Cabinet Office.

Finally, at least one procurer seems to not be reading the fine print on what qualifies you as a good supplier. An ICT procurement run by the Places for People social housing provider said it wouldn't bother looking at any company that didn't have a £100m annual turnover! It's now been told to look at official guidance contained in the Supplier Financial Appraisal notes.

Commenting on the exercise, Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, claimed, "The first results from mystery shopper are helping us to uncover the barriers to SMEs," while Stephen Allott, Crown representative for SMEs, believes: "The government has started to make big changes to support SMEs, but we need to know from SMEs on the ground. We need to know how the changes are starting to bite, and where they're not, why not. 

"Any SMEs who come across a tender that they don't understand, or where they think the procurer could be more transparent, should use the service to tell us what needs to change."

Going forward, the Cabinet Office plans to investigate all such SME complaints and publish more mystery shopper findings every three months - so the next run should be at the start of December.