All-of-Government almighty

When it comes to spending our money, we as tax payers should not have to be confused by an AoG deal in order to understand it

By Lee Davis, Auckland | Tuesday, 08 November 2011
Many years ago a wise man referring to the problems of Northern Ireland said, “If you’re not confused about the Troubles you don’t understand the situation.” The same might be said for All-of-Government (AoG) supply agreements.

The purpose of governement-issued RFPs is to divide up supply contracts to get taxpayers the best bang for their buck from a competitive, open market.

Under that assumption, AoG tenders seem counterintuitive. The government puts AoG tenders out to market on products it buys in volume. The agreement then forces individual departments, ministries, schools, colleges, universities and councils to source those products or services from select AoG-approved suppliers, instead of bargaining for the best product at the best price through their own RFPs.

Wondering if this is a win or loss for taxpayers and individual government entities is enough to make your head spin. And if you look back to Telecom...er, sorry Gen-i and Cyclone’s recent wins to supply an Apple product range to the AoG scheme, it gets more baffling.

Why is Gen-i the first thing that comes to mind? Gen-i has never supplied Apple gizmos to anyone. And why Cyclone, a company of only 50 employees? Can it handle the volume, the paperwork, the skill levels associated with Apple’s shiny stuff? Obviously the answer is yes because our Government said they can and Gen-i can too, because our Government said they can as well.

We know this because all AoG contracts have to go through the Cabinet for approval and all Cabinet minutes are available for any citizen to read at their leisure, once said citizen has filed an Official Information Act Request and has been shouted at by bureaucrats in Wellington for being a complete pain in the arse, just like I did to get to this story.

But even after that, Mr N. E. Citizen won’t be any the wiser because this supply of Apple kit to our entire government and all its many tentacles did not go through Cabinet. Yes that’s correct. Apple, a company that reportedly now has more cash reserves than the US, and is currently negotiating to buy the Moon, is selling its products to our government servants on an AoG deal that never went through a Cabinet meeting. This means we as taxpayers will be buying Apple products to service our needs through a phone company off-shoot and a firm that used to sell white box computers to Mainlanders.

The reason that has been supplied from Wellington Central that the Apple deal never went through Cabinet is that it was tagged onto the existing AoG supply deal for laptops and thus was only offered to the existing suppliers on that AoG scheme namely: Acer, Dell, HP, The Laptop Company and of course our friends Gen-i and Cyclone.
The deal could be worth a fortune. There’s no margin to shout about on Apple machines but heaps of fat on cases, extras, and insurance, with the latter being a big hit with schools.

“Oh! Now I understand,” says Mr N. E. Citizen.

But hang on. According to government sources, and a Gen-i press release, the AoG includes tablets. Hmm. Are iPads now to be categorised as laptops? Don’t these fall under the category of a device? If so, why are they getting tagged on to a laptop supply deal?

That is a little confusing. When it comes to spending our money, we as tax payers should not have to be confused by an AoG deal in order to understand it.