i want a mini GETS

Nik Jul 11

(For non-Kiwis, GETS is the Government Electronic Tender System)

GETS is cool. Seriously. It emails me a ton of RFIs and EOIs that I might be interested in. And somewhere within that sea of acronyms I’m sure some people make a heck of a lot of money.

Not us.

The typical GETS entry asks for something like the following:

The last 3 years’ financial records for your company (We’ve been in business barely 3 months)
How many DBAs we have on staff (ummm… 2?)
How many QA staff members we have (ummm… 2?)
Details of any National/International contracts, or how many institutions are using our solution overseas (gosh)

There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s perfectly reasonable due diligence when you’re talking about a six (or more) figure project. The kind of project that the Datacoms, Frondes and Intergens of this world will be all over.

What I want is a mini-GETS. I want to know about the little projects that are going on inside government. The $5,000 – $30,000 projects that Code to Customer can kick ass on. The ones that we can spec, build, test and deploy in the time it takes to gather responses to a DataFrondeGen-size RFP.

Where can I find those?

what other people thought

thats a brilliant idea, often government departments have projects like that and they dont even need sign-off!

Tim, July 11th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

I think investing a little bit of time understanding your customer and the environment they have to work within would be time well invested Nik. In a nutshell Government Organisations (The Crown) are able to contract you (the NGO) under some strict guidelines set by Treasury. Have a read of this in the first instance and go from there:
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/guidance/finmgmt-reporting/ngo
It may not be perfect, but it is what it is…

Bill, July 11th, 2008 at 6:01 pm

worst idea ever. your whole advantage is that you are small and fast moving.
1 – there is no such thing as a ’small’ RFP process. thats like having a light weight heavy bomber. it can’t be done.
2 – you don’t want to get into RFPs because it would kill your main advantages which – apart from being small and fast moving is that you (hopefulyl) enjoy your job and you get to code.. neither of which responding to RFPs is likely to encourage

if you really want in on some of that gummint work I’d suggest making sure that groups like intergen, fronde, signify know what you can offer them – they may well have a need to take you on as sub contractors. have a think about the kind of skills that you have that they may not be able to fulfil in a squeeze.. im sure there are plenty

best of luck

utunga, July 14th, 2008 at 10:42 am

after writing the above thought I better google for “light weight heavy bomber” first result is something called the B-24 Liberator which apparently “was notorious among American air crews for its tendency to catch fire”… take from that what you will. also it wasn’t.

utunga, July 14th, 2008 at 10:45 am

@miles (utunga): hah, good point. I’d prefer not to be doing the RFP dance to be honest, but I’d also like be involved in greasing the wheels of government.

I feel that we could make things more efficient, as well as taking some of that cash off of their hands :)

Nik, July 14th, 2008 at 10:48 am

You forgot the requirement to insure yourself which requires a whole other set of hoops to jump through and money to pay just to get that.

dfh, July 16th, 2008 at 9:57 am

There are a few flash sites that you could easily improve…

lance, July 17th, 2008 at 2:54 pm