Australian Opposition demands AG review of National Broadband Network tender

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 07 May 2008 09:28

IT Industry - Tenders

Billson has asked the auditor general, Ian McPhee, to "urgently examine and intervene in the tender process to ensure that the Government's own procurement guidelines are honoured and the Commonwealth and taxpayers are not exposed to the significant risks exposed by the folly of this tender process."

He has also criticised, as iTWire did yesterday , the Government's attempt to introduce regulatory change simultaneous with accepting responses to its RFP and selecting a bidder, and has called the Request-For-Proposal a 'Request-For-Policy'. "More relevant to this very complex project would be an initial stage of 'problem definition, desired goal/outcome description and public policy setting' and what the options may be to address this Government imperative, preceding the RFP and RFT stages," he says.

"Bidders are invited to include in their submissions views concerning the regulatory, access and competition framework," Billson says. This framework is by definition, the policy environment. This should be established and agreed in advance of detailed proposal formulation as these settings go to the heart of the public policy goals of consumer choice, pricing, open access requirements, structural and governance settings, expected investment levels, network architecture and legacy infrastructure requirements, Commonwealth equity and income expectations.

"It is incongruous to run the current RFP side by side and simultaneously with the a separate process considering the regulatory, access, competition, pricing and network architecture settings that are central public policy issues and crucial foundation parameters for bid development. Bordering on the ridiculous, the RFP actually invites bidders to nominate policy settings that have as their goal, the open access, wholesale price and structural governance interests of their competitors."

Billson concludes that "As a minimum, a project of this complexity, importance and financial exposure would involve a two-stage process. The Government idea, imperative or problem-to-be-solved would be presented in a RFP that sought to draw out responses in terms of possibly interventions, strategies and capabilities. Submissions would enable the Government to formulate a more specific proposal and approach (accompanied by the key contextual and regulatory requirements) as a RFT that would facilitate considered and actionable bids through an open, transparent and fair process."