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  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

12 tech merchants win slices of £504m NHS framework without competition because everything is terrible

(2021/01/25)


Twelve resellers have been awarded places on an NHS hardware contract for northern England in deals worth a total of £504m.

The North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative (NOE CPC) has dished out the four-year contracts without competition because "the necessary NHS expertise is not currently available to support the tender evaluation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic".

[1]

As such, "framework continuity is required during a period of high demand and priority to support the operational needs of the NHS in procuring these particular products and services at short notice," it said in the contract award notices.

The original £500m four-year hardware [2]contracts date back to 2017 and were set to expire this year.

[3]

Winning contracts worth £42m each were [4]Stone Computers , [5]Softcat , [6]XMA , [7]Parity Medical , [8]Roc Technologies , [9]Specialist Computer Centre , [10]Insight Direct , [11]Dacoll , [12]Boxxe , [13]HP , [14]Dell , and [15]Centerprise International .

Procurement covers a gamut of hardware and services as well as medical technologies, and includes desktops, laptops, tablets, a category known only as data-processing machines, and, rather quaintly, [16]minicomputer hardware .

The framework is available to all public-sector bodies, general practice commissioning consortia, NHS England, and any body obtaining new membership to NHS Shared Business Services, the Department of Health and Social Care's joint venture with Sopra Steria.

In a similar move, NHS Shared Business Services [17]has awarded a £500m framework to 28 resellers and technology firms , many of which also appear on the NOE CPC framework.

Established in 2007, and wholly owned by the NHS, the NOE CPC offers "collaborative and bespoke procurement solutions to the NHS and other public sector organisations", according to its website. The idea is it can bulk-buy and has more time to study the markets than a single organisation might have.

[18]

It has been busy. In December, Deloitte, Atos, and Phoenix Software [19]were among the 29 organisations it picked to provide a whopping £200m worth of IT consultancy services under a framework deal. ®

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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_business/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YA75I7Pt@FxiSbq9@MPsrgAAAMg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[2] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:015912-2017:TEXT:EN:HTML

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_business/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YA75I7Pt@FxiSbq9@MPsrgAAAMg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[4] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:035076-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[5] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:035075-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[6] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:035074-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[7] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:035073-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[8] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:035072-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[9] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:035071-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[10] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:035070-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[11] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:026462-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[12] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:026461-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[13] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:026460-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[14] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:026459-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[15] http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:026458-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer#Mid-1980s_and_1990s_decline

[17] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/22/nhs_award_500m_framework/

[18] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_business/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YA75I7Pt@FxiSbq9@MPsrgAAAMg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[19] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/22/north_of_england_nhs_buys/

[20] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/

£500 million

hoola

Do they really spend that much on IT hardware in 4 or 5 years?

I know they need stuff to work on but that is an awful lot of doctors and nurses.

Re: £500 million

Wellyboot

In the context of overall NHS spend for the North of England £2m(ish)/week is lost in the rounding error.

They spend £200m on IT consulting

Missing Semicolon

But have no expertise to evaluate IT tenders?

Brown envelopes.

Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

January 2099: Rob Malda Finally Gets His Damned Nano-Technology

The Linux hacker community finally breathed a collective sigh of relief
when it was announced that Rob Malda finally got his damned
nanotechnology.

"It's about time!" exclaimed one Dothead. "He been going on about that
crap since god-knows-when. Now that he's got that and those wearable
computers, maybe we can read about something interesting on Slashdot!"

Observers were skeptical, however. Already the now-immortal Rob Malda
nano-cyborg (who reportedly changed his name to "18 of 49, tertiary
adjunct of something-or-other") has picked up a few new causes to shout
about to the high heavens until everyone's ears start bleeding. In one
Slashdot article, Malda writes "Here's an article about the potential of
large greyish high-tech mile-wide cubes flying through space, all
controlled by a collective mind set upon intergalactic conquest.
Personally, I can't wait. Yum."