You shall not IT PASS! UK gov fishes tech catalogue out of bin as replacement stalls

By | Paul Kunert 28th January 2014 22:21 Cabinet Office extends CITHS, suppliers claim

The Crown Commercial Service that oversees how the UK public sector buys stuff has apparently granted an eight-month stay of execution to the Commodity IT Hardware & Software (CITHS) framework, through which Blighty's technology supply deals are brokered.

According to its original tender published in the Official Journal of the European Union where all public-sector business has to be touted CITHS was launched on 1 March, 2010, as a three-and-a-half-year legal agreement with an option to extend it by six months.

The Crown Commercial Service (CCS), a professional buying group acting on behalf of the Cabinet Office, organises the framework and triggered the six-month extension late last summer because its successor, the IT Products, Associated Software and Services (IT PASS) framework, was not ready to go live. And as the CITHS expiry date looms, IT PASS has yet to reach its tendering stage.

Multiple suppliers contacted by El Chan told us that CCS has pushed the shutdown of CITHS to October to accommodate its dilly dallying.

"CCS has applied for and been granted an extraordinary extension," said a well-placed IT distribution channel source. "This is the first time I can remember this [type of extension] happening."

IT PASS was due to be in place by September, but a Prior Information Notice (PIN) was only issued last month, along with PINs for two associated frameworks. A PIN is simply a warning that a contract, or similar, is about to be advertised.

Suppliers accepted into the IT PASS system, via a tendering process, will be able to bid on UK public-sector tech contracts valued between 4bn to 6bn over its lifetime; the scheme was due to be up and running by mid-March slap bang in the middle of the busy public-sector year-end.

But one company reckons negative feedback on the timing encouraged CCS to postpone its launch to April Fool's Day yes, really meaning that without the CITHS extension, there would have been no official vehicle for public-sector buyers to flush year-end budgets.

Further slippage on the timing of the IT PASS tendering stage is, of course, not impossible, and lest we forget CCS has form in this respect. Contracts are not expected to be awarded until the summer.

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You shall not IT PASS! UK gov fishes tech catalogue out of bin as replacement stalls