Administrative update

At one time or another, each of us has encountered the state administration. When mentioning the phrase in question, various associations can arise. However, no matter how diverse they are, hardly anyone can call public sector officials “technological gurus”. In most cases, these are employees with strictly profiled activities and acquired technical skills based on one or several office software programs.

However, the Council of Ministers announced a public procurement for the modernization and maintenance of existing software products and will hold a tender for "Provision of software insurance for Microsoft software products with an acquired license for perpetual right of use for the needs of the state administration of the Republic of Bulgaria".

The estimated value of the tender is 60,416,666 leva excluding VAT. The full documentation is available on the website of the Council of Ministers in the “Public Procurement” section. If you look at the document, you will understand that this public procurement is about purchasing future versions of MS Windows and MS Office. The tender “provides the opportunity to acquire an indefinite right to use newly released versions on the market until 31.12.2014 without requiring additional investments for re-acquisition of a license”

Here is a brief description of the planned acquisitions. The goal is to continue software assurance of the following licenses in the specified volume:

This means that the state administration will get Windows 8, future versions of MS Office, SharePoint, etc.

There is nothing wrong with providing computer programs in principle. The question in this case is, do all government officials need the latest versions of software products, which are currently only present in the development computers of Steve Ballmer and company anyway? Rather not. The differences between the individual versions of Excel, for example, are related to the interface and would rather make it difficult for an official accustomed to the status quo. The thesis that everyone should put up with outdated software is not serious either. On the contrary - probably for organizations such as the National Revenue Agency, the use of spreadsheet programs with the help of macros and databases such as MS SQL is mandatory and inevitable.

It is unacceptable, however, to spend such sums without conducting a detailed study of the needs of individual units. The administration is too complex a structure to apply a universal criterion for its technological provision. We have been hearing about e-government for years, but in practice we live in the land of paper. However, we are pouring tens of millions into software without any return on investment. What should this return actually be? Fast service, network connectivity between institutions, eliminating the need for physical presence and competence of those using the software. Or, in short, reduced administrative costs.

It is no secret that there are alternative products such as Linux and OpenOffice that could find a place in specific cases. In fact, the US Department of Defense, the French government, the Munich municipal administration, the US Federal Courts and many other public entities are already using alternative solutions for some of their specific administrative activities.

At the same time, in Bulgaria, one of the requirements of the public procurement is the presence of an external consultant who can prevent, analyze and monitor for possible risks and failures of the IT infrastructure, as well as provide technical advice, consultations, good practices and recommendations to the information technology units in the structures of the state administration. I wonder then, what do the IT specialists of this same state administration do?

It's probably easier to order something without considering whether you really need it and whether you can significantly reduce your expenses. Even more so when you're going to pay with someone else's money. The next time you're faced with yet another not-so-cooperative employee refusing to serve you and staring menacingly at the computer screen in front of her, remember that you donated at least one leva of yours so that she could arrange the cards in the latest version of virtual solitaire.

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