On Friday 12 October 2001 11:23, you wrote:
When is an old contract not a new contract? So if I go to any of my clients that I have supplied previously they don't need to tender because I just keep the contract open? I don't think that would stand up with the National Audit Office in supply of schools. We tender for every round of funding no matter whether or not the school uses our kit. When was the contract initiated and at what time was it ever tested for value for money? I would quite like to test that one in court.
My exerience, from the other side so to speak, is that whilst auditors are very fussy about *hardware* (and also services) requiring written justification for choosing one supplier over another. When it comes to software little to no justification is required. One time when I tried to get a straight answer on if we should even be considering buying something where there was only one supplier or if there were special procedures for such a situation I was met with disinterest.
The issue is really first and foremost about competition and monopolies, not the evils of MS. History shows that any organisation that is given monopoly
But it does mean that you need to go over any contract with them very carefully, since they are known experts at exploiting loopholes to their favour.
power ends up abusing it. Whatever the contracts, there is deemed to be a single point of supply in this case. Therefore there is a monopoly and in all other cases monopolies are regulated or specific action is taken to
In which case they need to be very tighly regulated, otherwise chaos results.
inject competition. So the Government should either appoint a regulator who then has the power to determine a fair profit margin based on comparisions with other products, development costs etc or put the same funding into say Open Source development to provide viable competition. I know in education, even a fraction of this money would enable full support of the NC with Open
Full support in a sustainable way regardless of what might happen to the curiculum in future. (Let alone that the software would be in *English*, or Welsh, or Cornish or whatever other native UK language you care to choose. Rather than children first having to understand American...)
Source and in the longer term billions would be saved. This is nothing to do
Any money which was spent would tend to stay in the EU most likely even in the UK, even in the local area of the school. Adgenda 21 anyone?