The Public Spend Forum, a group focusing on public-sector procurement, analyzed government IT spending and found that a “check the box culture” and a broken requirements and procurement process inhibits competition and limits innovation.
Its recent report, Billions in the Balance: Removing Barriers to Competition & Driving Innovation in the Public-Sector IT Market makes several recommendations for IT managers:
- Establish clear lines of authority and accountability.
- Develop a simple needs and outcomes statement instead of voluminous RFPs.
- Engage the market early.
- Develop a cost/outcome (ROI)-focused IT strategy.
- Focus on minimizing cost/outcome as the ROI of a government program
- Implement flexible IT architectures as recommended in the ACT-IAC 7S for Success Framework.
- Emphasize prototyping and approaches for minimum viable product rollouts.
- Avoid monolithic acquisition approaches and instead leverage existing procurement vehicles and allow use of alternative vehicles.
- Encourage smart risk taking.
- Reduce burdensome requirements and speed up the procurement process.
Keep reading this article at: http://gcn.com/blogs/pulse/2014/06/competition-in-it-procurement-report.aspx
