Small step, Government Contract Award Data Transparency

For 8 years now NZRise has sounded like a stuck record asking the Government to provide more transparency in relation to procurement – transparency of expenditure, transparency of closed panels, transparency of contracts awarded. You can read our wishlist here. 

MBIE have been actively investing in improving the information published via their government open tender platform GETS and in the most recent changes have enabled the ability for agencies to provide open data on contract value and contracts awarded. 

We applaud MBIE for their work in this space.

GETS however only represents a fraction of the work NZ Government agencies are purchasing. Some purchases are made via All of Government closed panels, some are awarded via individual agency closed panels, some via no process or as a variation to an existing procurement agreement – there are many workarounds utilised by creative buyers across government too. 

The ability for agencies to update their award data in GETS and the subsequent release of information by MBIE (which can be found here) is a great step in the right direction but we are still a long way away from true transparency of how taxpayers money is spent and how much is spent with New Zealand owned, Māori owned, Pasifika owned or regionally distributed companies. With this transparent lens we can collectively focus on ensuring distribution of expenditure is supporting jobs in Aotearoa – a critical issue in these COVID times. 

Analysis of data released

Below are our findings in assessing the awards dataset released by MBIE. Looking at the dataset the date range appears to be for the calendar year 2019. 

Our key finding from the dataset is that there are data quality issues making it difficult to analyse, agencies are either not updating award information or completing it in the comments (or other) fields. This would indicate more training is required to increase the accuracy of the information captured on GETS. 

One area of interest to NZRise members is government expenditure with New Zealand owned companies vs multinational companies. The data would indicate by dollar value – roughly a third of contracts awarded in the Digital Technology space were to New Zealand owned companies, a third to Not NZ owned companies, and a third where it is difficult to analyse as multiple parties were named. 

Specifically with regards the Digital Technology Industry contracts awarded we found:

1.  Government agencies do not complete the Awarded/Not Awarded field correctly: a number of “Not awarded” contracts are actually awarded, with information in the Comments field. This information has been included in the analysis.

2.  The number of award notices specific to the Digital Technology sector was 272 contracts. Of these 86 were reported as “not awarded” when the comments data would indicate that they actually were awarded. 51 captured the supplier information or value in the comments vs the designated field. 

3.  We were pleased to find examples of consortia contracted. One contract value of $11 million was awarded to multiple providers (21177826 – Crown Infrastructure Partners Limited – Marae Digital Connectivity). The providers listed are: Gisborne.net.nz Limited, PrimoWireless, Spark Digital, WiFiConnect Ltd, Enhanced Solutions Limited, Lightwire Limited, BayCity Communications Limited and Evolution Networks Ltd.

Footnote: 

To find out more or to join the kōrero, email [email protected]