Vexed Bermoothes

I hear from friends in the public sector that the Cabinet Office welcomes the opportunity to get involved at the detail level in Government’s procurement and contracting.  If true, this is just begging to create political conflict of interest, waste, and over-expenditure.

Some may say this Cabinet’s role.  No, it isn’t.  Their role is to set policy direction.  Implementation belongs to the non-partisan civil service.  Full stop.

The lack of standards and transparency over the Bermuda Government’s contracting is ridiculous given our $1 billion budget, the growing use of outsourced services, and weakness in financial accountability.  Some of the problems:

• We have no public contracting standards.  The process of tendering is willfully obscure, and varies significantly by department.
• We have no central contracting portal where tender opportunities can be discovered.
• There’s also little transparency over who wins what, or how much gets paid.

Government contracts are not about rewarding Friends & Family.  And they should not be used ad hoc to further political agendas (the Berkeley debacle should have seared that lesson into the public consciousness).

Yes, I am in favor of Government furthering small business through set-aside or sub-contracting requirements.  But these “positive discriminations” must be set out in transparent policies so that companies may pre-qualify for them, and graduate from them after a certain number of years.  Loose practices lead to inevitable accusations of favoritism, or the potential for fraud.

And yes, damn straight, Government should publish the winning bids for projects followed up by the amounts actually paid.  We need to encourage value for money and shining the light on performance is the best way.

I strongly suggest taking a look at the Cayman Island’s implementation, which is well-scaled to a community like ours.

1. There is a central committee – which includes a balance of civil servants and external community members – that oversees both the creation of a proper contracting system and its operation.
2. There are rules [pdf] that apply to all government portfolios, ministries, departments, statutory authorities and government companies.
3. The process is transparent, including post implementation reporting.