Starter Kit. Idea 459 of 500. Cluster 24
A website where every open tender is listed in one place, so a small firm can find it and bid
The mechanism, from the book
The one thing. A country where people do not expect the rules to hold cannot build anything else, and proof can be manufactured by private people, one published record at a time.
The first step
Choose one district and, for one month, collect every public tender notice you can find in the newspapers, on notice boards and on official websites, then record the winner and the price when each is awarded. Put them in one spreadsheet and share it with local journalists and business groups. The proof is how many people use it, and a contractor who pays for alerts.
- Who pays first
- A small contractor who misses tenders scattered across notice boards, and pays for alerts because one contract won covers years of the fee.
- What leaves today
- Nobody can expect public contracts to go to the best bid while nobody can see them; one published list of tenders and winners is that proof.
Ask first
- Information and Communication Technology Agency. Ask where official tender notices are published online and how often.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to register a listing service that charges small firms.
Check before you spend
Confirm that you copy notices accurately with their source and closing date, and that your service never claims to be official.
Find out these three numbers
- How many tender notices appear in one district each month?
- Would a small firm pay a monthly fee for alerts?
- How long does it take to collect a month's notices?
A comparison from the book
The list. Chapter Fourteen
"Government buying through an online system where every bid is recorded. The land register put online."
Notices in one place, and winners recorded, let a small firm find the bid and see who won.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.