By Sarah Left, 20 September 1999 00:30
NEWS The UK government intends to set up an online shopping mall for government procurement that will cover everything from fax paper to computer systems. The new procurement channel will be a function of the recently-announced Office of Government Commerce (OGC), and will be available online and over the Government Secure Intranet (GSI). According to Brian Rigby, the director of the Treasury's Procurement Group, the move is an attempt to harness the bulk purchasing power of central government. "Fifteen years of devolution have fragmented purchasing power," he explained. "No one knows how much we buy from a single company. We know what we spend, but we don't know what we buy." The OGC is charged with shaving £1bn from the government's shopping bill. Yet previous attempts at catalogues have come up short. GCat was meant to provide this service for government IT purchases, but three years after its launch, less that 20 per cent of IT buying is done through the system. This time government departments and agencies must use the shopping mall unless they can prove to the OGC that they're getting a better deal elsewhere. Ian Angell, professor of information systems at the London School of Economics, says it's about time the government started flexing its purchasing muscle. It's only right, he says, that departments be put under pressure to use the OGC's mall, given GCat's failure to catch on. "Inertia is the most powerful force in the world," he commented. "You need some sort of force to overcome inertia."
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