Ministry lacks oversight of most public IT procurements

State and municipal institutions have spent nearly half a billion euros on information technology procurements over the past two years, while about one in five tenders attracted only one bidder, LSM’s Latvian Radio programme Atvērtie faili reported.

The ministry responsible for the sector has not rushed to identify those responsible, noting that the situation is not much better in other European Union countries. Industry leaders acknowledge that the form of procurements currently matters more than their substance.

At the beginning of the summer, the prime minister suspended large IT procurements for 30 days to allow them to be reviewed. Almost 40 percent of the procurements had been handled by three companies.

IT sector compared with a shovel

An IT specialist, who agreed to speak on condition that the programme would not reveal his identity, compared Latvia’s IT sector with a shovel that does not need to be created from scratch.

The specialist, referred to as Viktor, said Latvia was a small country where everyone in the IT sector knows one another, making frank comments risky. He has held senior positions in the sector for several years and previously worked as a programmer, system administrator, systems architect and technical director. His experience includes work with various software, including the procurement of the E-health system.

Asked about Latvia’s IT procurement system, Viktor said that a shovel was neither positive nor negative because it simply served a function. The important question, he said, was whether public procurement systems fulfilled their purpose and achieved their objectives.

The programme identified IT system maintenance procurements as the area with the greatest problems. Procurement requirements can exclude new companies, while some tenders are acknowledged to have no clear objective.

The ministry has promised reforms in IT procurements, while acknowledging that it does not monitor what happens in most of them. Officials working to reduce bureaucracy will consider ways to increase competition in tenders.