back to article 'End the commercial-in-confidence CROOKS' CHARTER', gov told

Secrecy in public sector contracts must be removed if government is to ever put an end to freeloading by suppliers at the taxpayers' expense, parliamentarians have been told. A Public Administration Committee probe into government procurement heard this suggestion yesterday, as the top bods within the Cabinet Office were …

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  1. James Micallef Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    about time

    And about time too. It's not like competing vendors don't know their competitors' pricing, I'm pretty sure everyone knows everyone else's list price. The problem is with the off-list price.

    I'm a full believer in free-market capitalism, but this isn't what we have right now, we have a semi-closed market with imperfect and asymmetrical information. The more info is public the better. Will suppliers lose out? Only the ones that are gouging the taxpayers. The honest suppliers are the ones with everything to gain

  2. frank ly

    You couldn't make it up

    So, a lawyer employed by a government department used his legal magic to stop the goverment's own CIO from having a look at what was going on in the department?

    You couldn't make it up, unless you were a scriptwriter for Yes Minister.

    1. Gordon 10
      Facepalm

      Re: You couldn't make it up

      I presume it wasnt "stopping" more likely a statement saying if we show this to unauthorised people we'll get hung out to dry by the penalties on the Commercial-in-confidence clauses we have stupidly signed.

      "Please complete form 345z to become an authorised person within the terms of this contract"

      So delay and obscurification rather than "stopping"

      Not that it makes it any more tolerable.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: You couldn't make it up

        Seems to me that they should be hung out to dry by the CIO for having signed such contracts.

  3. taxman
    Big Brother

    Litmus test

    OK, so how much did the Cabinet Office pay for the service provided by Akamai for GOV.UK? Including the fee by having to go through ATOS.

    How open are they going to be?

  4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Milton Friedman said it...

    "There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income."

    1. Intractable Potsherd

      Re: Milton Friedman said it...

      And Friedman was a seriously sad man. Many of us are far more careful with others' money than with our own. If I'm on expenses, I do not stay anywhere that I wouldn't if buying it myself, and when it comes to subsistence, I never reach the limit set. Indeed, I sometimes decide that it isn't fair to charge someone for expenses if, for instance, I enjoyed it. I also ensure that I book flights and accommodation myself, rather than through the fleecing "travel agent" the organisation insists on using, because I can usually save the organisation a fair percentage. On occasion, I have been on the end of "Spend lots - we need to get rid of this money before it is taken off us." I don't understand that mentality.

      So, back to Friedman - he, like so many right-wing economists, are essentially fraudulent bastards who think everyone is out to get what they can. They demean the honest majority, and so do you by believing it,

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Milton Friedman said it...

        @Intractable Potsherd

        Thanks for that. I'm personally sick of this notion that we're all greedy c***s who scam at every opportunity because that's the way it is. Funny, the ones who perpetuate the myth are always the self interested, the ones with snout most firmly in someone else's trough who have the most to gain by making the rest of us in their own image. A great many (I'd stop a long way short of most) of us don't routinely take others for a ride just because we can; employers, public money or otherwise. I resent the increasingly accepted public notion that 'grab what you can get is OK'.

        I've done an awful lot of public sector work over the years, and I don't think I've ever charged anything other than a price I think is fair for a job; no more, no less, no padding and no froth. I was genuinely shocked on one occasion a long time ago when a public sector client offered, over a lot of beer, to let me pad invoices up in exchange for a cut. Depressingly, he was shocked that I was shocked.

        I've always taken as the ideal a councillor I knew when I first started freelancing, socialist to the core ho learned at the knee of Keir Hardie . He simply would not accept freebies, gifts or anything for personal gain, but would rightly stick his hand in his pocket for any expenses not strictly needed to do his job. He wanted a photo I'd taken of him with a visiting dignitary, and I had a spare overprint and told him he could have it; he wouldn't hear of it even though it was effectively bin fodder, but insisted on paying the going rate. He was an ex railwayman who spent most of his free time, and then the majority of his retirement, tirelessly working for others, both as a councillor and more practically with the kind of community work that doesn't make the papers, but does change lives.

        He stood out all the more for the contrast with his fellow councillors who would, as one wit remarked "turn up for the opening of a paper bag if there was half a chance of a free sandwich and 2 column inches". He was finally hounded out by the same people whose hands were always held out for freebies.

        If we want to stop the systematic plunder of public funds by those with swill dripping from their chins, we could do a lot worse than insisting that graft and greed are not given the easy ride they currently enjoy in the public discourse. Anyone reading the article might believe that the excessive profits made are the result of some inefficiency that the businesses themselves woefully regret, and that the extra money has somehow evaporated and vanished like a leak from a privatised London water main. It hasn't, and where possible it should be clawed back, or those businesses prevented from bidding for new contracts.

        If we don't collectively make it loud and clear to MPs, government and piss taking businesses that the current behaviour is unacceptable, we'll be headed back to the Rotten Boroughs, landed gentry and the idea of taxation as wealth generation for the few.

  5. Bluenose
    FAIL

    Once again govt lying about the reality

    I have experience of working with Govt depts and can state categorically that Govt depts chat to each other constantly about the service providers they are using, their capabilities and most importantly of all, the prices they are paying for the services including rates and margins. The idea that they cannot share bid information is a non-starter in my view.

    As for the confidentiality provisions signed by Govt, if they are bad provisions then the Govt is to blame as they provide the terms and more often than not it is the suppliers who are shafted by the terms not the Govt. As an example of the situation all Govt contracts include open book accounting provisions so the customer can see clearly what the supplier's margins are and how they have been calculated.

    I suppose the last thing that suppliers can accept the is honesty from the Govt, they are not honest with any one else.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In part the oddity is the focus on the suppliers margin. Why care? Price to the end procurer absolutely but the margin of one supplier over another is not really an issue. Worse it suggests they have been subject to lock in and are forced to look at competition as a competition between resellers of a single technology supplier - like the Oracle Framework plan of FCO.

    Commercial in confidence is no barrier to sharing in Whitehall and releasing it tothe public or sharing data between depts is possible owing to public interest over ride in both FOI and data protection laws.

    More likely is the issue of having signed a inappropriate contract or concealing internal issues - poor management data or simply blaming the supplier for something not in the contract. Its also the case that the contract should be with the Crown authorities - technically Secretaries of State are interchangeable and all departments (not agencies etc) are legally the same entity. Also C-i-C is the lowest possible classification above unrestricted and ridiculously over used. Certainly seen sections mark everything as CiC as a matter of course.

    Some elements of a contract may well be truly private and should be restricted status not C-i-C - CVs, individual salaries or charge out rates for example. What is of far more interest is the performance achieved against the SLA and the price paid for that performance compared to equivalent situations in both the public and private sectors.

    Last point CO seem to take legal opinion as legal fact or binding. Its only an opinion - go back and ask what the downside costs and risks are rather whether you CAN do something or not.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    CiC isn't a civil service protective marking but a commercial, private sector, one that is normally insisted upon by companies the government do business with. It's not unusual for a company submitting a tender to insist that civil servants who have access to the tender sign non disclosure agreements.

    In my experience the companies who complain are the ones that are unsuccessful with a bid and would complain just as loudly if their tender information were released without their agreement.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Purchasing has always been an issue. I used to work for one of the Public Sector's Shared Service centers (now privatised) where we were introducing a unified electronic procurement system and it was an absolute nightmare. We had three agencies buying the same products from the same vendor but point blank refusing to work with each other and have one account (individual budgets weren't an issue because we could trace the purchases by agency).

    Most government departments have been given so much freedom when it comes to their finances they'll do anything to resist co-operation that could potentially curtail that freedom even if its in their best interests.

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Many years ago I was sent on a short course run by a contractor. The contractor had sold equipment to a government department and the four day course was about how to maintain it.

    As to accommodation, three of us were sharing an upstairs front room of a scruffy pub on Watling Street and HGVs were rumbling along all night just a few metres from my bed. The next day I went to a gun shop and bought some earplugs! Now this was a LONG time ago but the company said "Its expensive around here and your £35 per-diem for lodgings just isn't enough so that's why we booked you in there. £80 per day is the minimum that is any good around here, £120 per day and you get a nice room, £200 per day and you get luxury. We'll make it up to you by taking you to dinner."

    Later at a really brilliant restaurant we were plied with the best of food and drink, it was embarrassing really. "John will be along later," said the host "he's just sold millions of poundsworth of radar!" When John arrived (John is not his real name) he was on cloud nine. Bottles of malt whisky appeared and giant cigars about eight inches long. Lovely - this must be how the other half live! In actual fact I was so embarrassed by the excessive hospitality that for the remaining nights I went to a fish-and-chip shop and paid for my own dinner.

    It does however make one realise that some people must be on the gravy train all the time and someone has to pay for it. This is why some things, especially military things, cost so much.

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