UK.gov tempts SMEs with tasty framework, then slaps them in face

84% of SMEs on the framework?

Presumably that's 84% of SMEs interested in selling digital services to the government that the government knows about. Or maybe 84% of SMEs who have previously sold digital services to the government. It clearly isn't 84% of SMEs since most SMEs don't provide digital services. It probably isn't 84% of companies that provide 'digital services' as I can't imagine there's an accurate list of them.

So it sounds like the statistics are being assembled in a way that lets the civil service ignore any company that thinks working for the government is a PITA.

We just failed to make the shortlist for a tender we'd been working on for over a year.

We started off by being recommended by another local authority to our potential customer. We went in a did a demo. We established that they liked our product better than their current one, and all the other ones on the market they'd seen. We were cheaper than everyone else too. Then they started on a tender process that I'm sure cost more in admin time than the total value of the contract, and finally the person who would actually be using the software was told that they couldn't choose, because we weren't a big enough company to be permitted to do business with the government.

Details available on request. It's not just that I'm pissed off with losing the work, though that smarts - it would have been a big deal for us and we'd have been able to do it really well, It's the combination of that with the empty lies that central government tells about encouraging SMEs that really gets my goat.

Govt nonsense

Govt and public sector don't want SME's.

They want the ideas from SME's but would like to give them to the primes. They like the idea of cheap SME's. But its not in any public sector procurers interest to buy cheaper - the more they spend, the bigger the promotion and their wages.

They want to procure from nice big safe expensive consultancies where they wont get fired when it goes wrong and get meetings in nice glass fronted offices..

DSTL, Home Office, GCHQ, MoD - seen it, been there, done the presentation, had the nods, beaten the opposition but didnt get the cheque.

The bidding process itself is enough to put most SMEs off.

The time and the cost is just not something that a company that does not turn over millions can risk without some expectation that they could get the contract.

Peter Gathercole wrote...

"The time and the cost is just not something that a company that does not turn over millions can risk without some expectation that they could get the contract."

Technically your business is not recognisesd (by the government) as 'small' until it turns over £1.6M - 96% of all UK businesses don't of course and are thus completely invisible to government. When you hear politicos talking about "small business" and you imagine 'ooh! they mean me" - Noooooooo... Not by a very long chalk!