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Now consider the situation that the government official knows your company can deliver on time and in budget, with little fuss, and your competitors are known t

by rockdoe 12y ago

Now consider the situation that the government official knows your company can deliver on time and in budget, with little fuss, and your competitors are known to underbid, over-promise, deliver very late or never and discuss endlessly over contractual fine language when they start failing. It's absolutely disgusting that he'd craft his bid to the supplier he knows isn't taking shit, right?

conanbatt 12y ago
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Thinking it will turn out better is not a good justification of corruption, specially because in the end, it doesnt turn out better. The lack of accountability and transparency in these kind of expenditures are common in all governments around the world and its the classic way to stiff taxpayers out of their money.
- rockdoe 12y ago
  because in the end, it doesnt turn out better. <citation needed> So what's an administrator to do in that situation? Take the "best" bid, see the project go over time, see the contract and specification disputes start, see the costs go up, and end up with a 300M failure after 6 years? What you call "corruption" and "a lack of accountability or transparency" I would call "exercise best judgment and experience" to save the taxpayers their money. Basically, a procurer doing his job. You would have some point if software were more amendable to requirements specification and bidding, but the entire industry is still terrible at it, so it's a bad process, because it doesn't actually promote "accountability and transparency" at all.
  - pc86 12y ago
    I think we have different ideas of what a government procurer's job is. It's not a government employees job to craft a bid in order to prevent specific private companies from being able to apply. Saying you want a staff of 10 FTEs because $ILLOGICAL_REASON is still illogical but certainly not the least illogical thing in the government procurement process, for sure. Saying you want a staff of 10 FTEs because $FAVORED_COMPANY has 12 and $COMPETITOR has 8 is absolutely corruption. Short of envelopes full of cash I don't know how you get more corrupt than that. And to your earlier comment, you are assuming both > your company can deliver on time and in budget, with little fuss and > your competitors are known to underbid, over-promise, deliver very late or never and discuss endlessly over contractual fine language when they start failing. This may very well be the case in other examples of this going on, but I can assure you neither point was true in my case (but is obviously specific to me, the plural of anecdote is not data, etc).

by rockdoe 12y ago

conanbatt 12y ago

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Thinking it will turn out better is not a good justification of corruption, specially because in the end, it doesnt turn out better. The lack of accountability and transparency in these kind of expenditures are common in all governments around the world and its the classic way to stiff taxpayers out of their money.

rockdoe 12y ago
because in the end, it doesnt turn out better. <citation needed> So what's an administrator to do in that situation? Take the "best" bid, see the project go over time, see the contract and specification disputes start, see the costs go up, and end up with a 300M failure after 6 years? What you call "corruption" and "a lack of accountability or transparency" I would call "exercise best judgment and experience" to save the taxpayers their money. Basically, a procurer doing his job. You would have some point if software were more amendable to requirements specification and bidding, but the entire industry is still terrible at it, so it's a bad process, because it doesn't actually promote "accountability and transparency" at all.
- pc86 12y ago
  I think we have different ideas of what a government procurer's job is. It's not a government employees job to craft a bid in order to prevent specific private companies from being able to apply. Saying you want a staff of 10 FTEs because $ILLOGICAL_REASON is still illogical but certainly not the least illogical thing in the government procurement process, for sure. Saying you want a staff of 10 FTEs because $FAVORED_COMPANY has 12 and $COMPETITOR has 8 is absolutely corruption. Short of envelopes full of cash I don't know how you get more corrupt than that. And to your earlier comment, you are assuming both > your company can deliver on time and in budget, with little fuss and > your competitors are known to underbid, over-promise, deliver very late or never and discuss endlessly over contractual fine language when they start failing. This may very well be the case in other examples of this going on, but I can assure you neither point was true in my case (but is obviously specific to me, the plural of anecdote is not data, etc).