The Swiss government agency for Building and Logistics (BBL) has signed a software licence agreement with Microsoft worth 42 million CHF (about 27,8 million euro) without a request for tender, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported on Tuesday.
BBL spokesperson Katja Lunau explained to the Zürich newspaper that competition for this particular project was not an option. She also said that the licensing agreement did not need to be made public. "Federal license agreements, which include Microsoft products, have never been publicly advertised. When these agreements were made, today's procurement laws were not yet in force was", the newspaper quotes Lunau.
The Swiss Open Systems User Group (/ch/open) is protesting against the deal. According to board member Matthias Stürmer the Swiss kanton of Soluthurn and the German city of Munich both prove that competition is possible. He also points to the national IT strategy that was adopted in 2004, aiming to balance the use of proprietary and open source software. The policy for instance instructs public bodies to at least test open source alternatives to proprietary applications.
The Neue Zürcher Zeiting reports that BBL had considered not to publish the contract. The agency decided to change tactics after a closer inspection of the rules. According to the newspaper, complaints against the unfair awarding of the software contract can be formally brought before the national court in Switzerland.
The government agency signed the licence-agreement in February. The agreement was made public in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce on 1 May. According to the notification, the existing license agreement with Microsoft for desktop and server software are renewed for another three years. For services, maintenance and support, costs are estimated to be some 14 million CHF (about 9.2 million euro).
More information:
Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce
BBL software licence agreement(in German)
Neue Zürcher Zeiting news item(in German)
Open source strategy paper of the National Administration(in German)