Office of Fair Trading: UK.gov IT deals lack effective competition

No contract drafting required

On G-Cloud there is no need for the supplier to draft a contract that already exists in terms of the Call Off agreement. The suppliers only need to add specific terms and conditions for their offering as well as a service description and day rates (if required).

Most small suppliers are not in a position to negotiate changes to Govt contracts and to be honest most of the so called oligopoly are unable to get any material changes to the terms of such contracts. So everyone is shafted by the onerous terms and the need for everyone to be SC cleared even when cleaning windows from the outside.

That's interesting. Here in the US, PhD means a doctorate of philosophy. I'm always amazed by how closely US English and English English are to each other for most things, but when the differences occur they are HUGE.

Pissed means I'm angry, but to you it means drunk (what do you guys call an angry drunk?). Fries are fried potatoes to me, but chips to you. Fanny to me is someone's ass, but to you it's... not that, we'll just leave that there, since it's hump day. And today I learn that PhD for you guys is either an incorrect number of chromosomes or some other sort of developmental problem.

I have deduced your meaning of the term based on my own experience with contracts from your government. We do a few jobs for you guys every year and I've never received such convoluted contracts from any other government. I accept that plenty of words have multiple meanings, but I've always found it best to use the same definition for a word throughout a given document. It's also customary for us that combined sums and their various components are equal.

But hey, it's cool. None of the PhD's here will touch one of your contracts, they say it's illegal for me to intentionally harm my staff. The past 25-30 contracts I've received from you guys I've just paid 'Bong-Hit Billy' an extra $200, cash, to deal with them. Normally he's the guy that crawls into our big machines to remove broken parts or people that had loved ones pay their ransom. He seems to really enjoy the contract work though. He's always laughing, but he's got a special 'happy' laugh when he's pleased. They won't let him out of Heathrow anymore, they just send him back. I keep hoping somebody from your government will come meet him in person. He always asks, but no luck yet. He wears restraints and he's tied to the gantry crane with cabling we made ourselves, tough stuff it is for sure, so it's safe to feed him as long as you're not menstruating . But contracts from your government require a special type of person to decipher. Kind of the opposite of a PhD really.

What I want to see is the evidence behind this policy

Could someone explain why it's going to be cheaper and better done this way? It looks a mess that the clients have no way to sensibly manage.

Oh, and I would just love to see how many Restricted and higher marked document have ended up on GDS's Google Apps instance. Given they run the ICT spend controls processes, they must get sent quite a few protective marked documents.

And as for 'I want to take advantage of price reductions now', why not just implement (and actually use) a simple benchmarking clause. Job done, simply and effective.