European rules on procurement are not a good tool to increase the use of open source by public administrations, concludes NOiV, the Dutch national resource centre on open source.
NOiV on Friday published an analysis into public IT procurement methods. "Over the last few months, we have received several complaints from IT suppliers regarding public procurements that discriminate against open source", NOiV explained in a statement on its web site. The resource centre says it is now discussing its analysis with the ministry of Economic Affairs.
According to the author of the report, the Belgian procurement lawyer Fulco Simon, two very common methods used by public administrations to procure IT are actually in conflict with procurement rules. Simon also describes a third procurement method that conforms to the rules, yet will allow the public administration to choose the IT solution it wants. "Procurement is not a good tool to help increase the use of open source by public bodies", NOiV program manager Ineke Schop comments.
According to Simon, many framework procurement agreements and tenders requesting a reseller for specific products, are not carried out in the correct way. In the first case, a public body will ask a company to supply a range of specific IT products. However, according to the procurement lawyer, the public body should ensure providers of alternatives are able to participate for each of the items listed.
In the second case, a public body requests a specific product or brand, assuming that this will create sufficient competition between resellers. Simon says this will only lead to competition among resellers of a given brand. However, the procurement rules are meant to create inter-brand competition.
In the third procurement method described by Simon, a public organisation will request a vendor of both a specific product and a comparable alternative. This will create inter-brand competition between suppliers, yet also allows the organisation to choose either product.
More information:
NOiV statement on procurement analysis (in Dutch)
Procurement analysis (in Dutch, pdf)
Automatiseringgids news item (in Dutch)