Bonum Certa Men Certa

Government Procurement in the UK

How the vocation of taxpayers' money is determined

Coin towers



Summary: The exclusion of important and viable market players by putting the "Microsoft" brand name, for example, right there inside the requirements

THE BUSINESS of procurement sure is funny. In Switzerland it was such "funny business" that it led to a lawsuit which we covered mostly one year ago in:



  1. Microsoft Sued Over Its Corruption in Switzerland, Microsoft Debt Revisited
  2. Can the United Kingdom and Hungary Still be Sued for Excluding Free Software?
  3. 3 New Counts of Antitrust Violation by Microsoft?
  4. Is Microsoft Breaking the Law in Switzerland Too?
  5. Microsoft Uses Lobbyists to Attack Holland's Migration to Free Software and Sort of Bribes South African Teachers Who Use Windows
  6. ZDNet/eWeek Ruins Peter Judge's Good Article by Attacking Red Hat When Microsoft Does the Crime
  7. Week of Microsoft Government Affairs: a Look Back, a Look Ahead
  8. Lawsuit Against Microsoft/Switzerland Succeeds So Far, More Countries/Companies Should Follow Suit
  9. Latest Reports on Microsoft Bulk Deals Being Blocked in Switzerland, New Zealand
  10. Swiss Government and Federal Computer Weekly: Why the Hostility Towards Free Software?
  11. Switzerland and the UK Under Fire for Perpetual Microsoft Engagements
  12. Lawsuit Over Alleged Microsoft Corruption in Switzerland Escalates to Federal Court
  13. When Microsoft-Only/Lock-in is Defined as “Technology”
  14. Microsoft's Allegedly Illegal Swiss Contracts to Take People to Court Again
  15. Microsoft's Allegedly Illegal US Procurement Gets Frozen After Lawsuit


The practice of illegal procurement which excludes competition to what's currently being used is an issue we have covered many times since 2007. We wrote about the situation in the UK under posts such as:

  1. Has Microsoft Unleashed Its Trolls at the UK Authorities?
  2. Microsoft UK's Chief 'Accomplice' Jumps Ship
  3. Richard Steel's and Microsoft Ballnux Franchise (Updated)
  4. Signs of Microsoft Corruption in the United Kingdom and Czech Republic
  5. The Newhamicrosoft Saga: Part Deux


The important factors which which are cronyism and nepotism sure play a role everywhere, government procurement included. It is worth understanding just where it happens and when it happens; as this new article explains, Microsoft somehow 'wins' not because it has technical merit but because it is embedded into the policy. To quote:

European public sector IT contracts are unfairly favouring large suppliers such as Microsoft by ignoring the rules governing the use of trademarks in tender requests, according to a new report.

[...]

Where tenders were found to include trademarks, the overwhelming majority mentioned ones belonging to Microsoft.

Bertrand Diard, chief executive of open-source data management vendor Talend, called on the UK government to enforce best practice and to encourage fair competition for UK public sector contracts.

“The current process of IT contract tender [in Europe] is rife with issues,” he said. “If there is to be any development for open standards in the UK, then responsibility falls upon the shoulders of those in the Cabinet Office to follow through on their initial plans.”

Under EU rules, public sector bodies should avoid using trademarks in tender notices for software packages and information systems, in order to encourage competition.

In the wake of its long-running anti-trust dispute with Microsoft, EU officials had be keen to encourage public sector organisations to consider alternatives to Microsoft’s technology, particularly in areas where the Redmond-based firm dominated the market, such as desktop operating systems and productivity tools.


Had platforms been assessed based on their technical features (and antifeatures), Microsoft would rank quite low. As an educator, Mr. Pogson explains what is wrong about Windows, for starters:

We don’t need more

* DRM, * phoning home, * re-re-reboots, * ABI/APIs, * exclusive dealing, * stuff KLUDGED to the OS like mud pies, and * complexity.

Enough! Use GNU/Linux to be free of this burden on IT. I have been using GNU/Linux for IT almost exclusively since 2000 and I have only had a few problems, not usually involving security, in all that time whereas with that other OS people are getting rafts of problems to fix monthly like a woman’s curse.


One regular reader of ours told us that Mr. Pogson had been laid off possibly because of his preference for GNU/Linux, which in the education sector is not so widespread. In some sense, he may have been expelled, so to speak, for having other opinions (which are very defensible by the way). Similarly, one British journalist insinuates that by issuing veiled threats following the Bristol incident (see links at the bottom for background), the side which empowers and profits from proprietary software in the British public sector only reinforces the perception that those who favbour Free/open source software suffer retribution. One article says: "A Linux shop has spoken out in defence of boo-hissstems integrators otherwise blamed for dominating the industry, stifling competition, ripping off tax payers and presiding over public IT failures so infamous they discredited the last government and stained the reputation of an entire profession."

Another article, from the excellent journalist Mark Ballard, speaks about the threats. To quote: "The big IT suppliers are so powerful, it is said, they control the vast majority of public sector IT, which is done in their commercial interest. That may count as quid pro quo from supplier's perspective. But when that supplier is part of an oligopoly servicing a monopoly, it is a little unfortunate for anything trying to breathe outside that comfortable little world that has become known as government IT." For some background, see the links we posted under government and public sector earlier this week. We reproduce them below.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
 
"Security Advantages" Explained by a Scammy "Security" Site That Uses LLMs to Spew Out Garbage
destroying the Web by saturating it with "bullshit".
Links 12/10/2024: Boeing to Cut 17,000 Jobs, Medieval Sleeping Habits, Warning About Liquidweb
Links for the day
Links 12/10/2024: Health, Safety and Climate Concerns
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/10/2024: Ensemble and Assembler
Links for the day
Links 12/10/2024: TikTok Layoffs and Risk of More Wars
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 11, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, October 11, 2024
Gemini Links 11/10/2024: Against Cynicism, on Atheism, and Dropping Off The Internet
Links for the day
IBM Employees Smell Another Wave of Mass Layoffs (and Explain the Signs)
IBM currently has the policy of hiding the layoffs from shareholders and from the press using NDAs
Links 11/10/2024: Lots More Censorship and Growing Concerns About Health Impact of Social Control Media
Links for the day
Going Almost 4.5 Decades Back to Find 'Dirt' on a Person
That incident was 42.5 years ago. Is that how far some people would go in an effort to discredit a person?
XBox is Dead. This is Just the Beginning.
the main reason Microsoft bought Activision/Blizzard was to hide the growing losses and failure of XBox
The Risk to the "Linux" Brand
Brands that are not guarded from misuse/abuse will inevitably lose their original meaning and their value
Gemini Links 11/10/2024: Deploying Common Lisp Programs and Examining FreeBSD
Links for the day
Links 11/10/2024: Discord Still Blocked in Turkey, Google Might be Split
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 10, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, October 10, 2024
LinuxSecurity (Guardian Digital, Inc) Sloppy With Its 'Linux' Slop
This kind of stuff is killing the World Wide Web and ruins human knowledge
[Meme] Chin-dropping and Jaw-dropping (Considerable Drop in Patent Validity and Quality)
This drop is very much intentional
Gemini Links 10/10/2024: Untruth, SSH, Gopher, and More
Links for the day
Geminispace Beyond 4,100 Capsules
4,000 was less than 8 weeks ago
Links 10/10/2024: TikTok's Legal Problems, WeblogPoMo Challenges
Links for the day
[Meme] European Patent Convention and Vienna Convention Became Only Fictions (Laws and Constitutions Are Now Works of Fiction in Europe)
A political crisis and blunder
Almost a Thousand EPO Staff Protesting to EPO Member States That the Office Illegally Grants Software Patents and Other Invalid European Patents
"The outcome confirms that the concerns about the EPO’s ability to grant legally sound patents remain"
Loss of Technical Merit(ocracy)
"buzzword diplomas"
Junk Science
science is being compromised for business purposes
[Meme] Dismantling .io (Stick a Fork, the Hype is Done)
NVIDIA is an excellent new example of hype driving up fictional "value"
UNIX is 55 This Year, It is 6 Years Older Than Microsoft
It should be noted that the surviving co-creator of UNIX, Ken Thompson, 'moved' to GNU/Linux (Debian) in recent years
This Year, for the First Time Since August 2019 (Bill Gates MIT Scandal, Jeffrey Epstein Bribes), libreplanet-discuss Was Inactive an Entire Month
The MIT injustice remains and recent "libreplanet" events were held in a venue that's not MIT and far less prestigious than MIT (the "Wentworth" imitation)
[Meme] Different Ending for Jurassic Park
UNIX in old movies
Evolution of Hype
Passing fads and rebranding
Groklaw Will Hopefully Come Back
Sites should be able to run for decades with hardly any human role/interaction, but that's not where we are...
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 09, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 09, 2024