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Connecting Scotland our broadband future: Making it Happen
AGGREGATED PROCUREMENT: making it value for money for the public sector
1. Our strategy made a commitment to exploit the potential of the public sector's aggregated demand for higher bandwidth connectivity in order to lever in major investment in infrastructure from the private sector, and thus encourage wider provision of broadband. This new approach to telecoms procurement for the public sector has now been taken up in other parts of the UK under the guidance of the Office of Government Commerce. We are in the lead in the scale and complexity of the challenge we have set ourselves - by selecting as 'Pathfinders', the Highlands & Islands and the South of Scotland to pioneer this approach.
2. The two Pathfinder projects were set up in the Autumn of 2001. While the objectives and the procurement process for each of the Pathfinder areas will be largely the same, the detailed service requirements and local circumstances are distinctive and different. Aggregation of public sector demand will include requirements of schools, other local authority services and health. The Executive has been working closely with local authority and health partners to ensure that the needs of each area are accurately reflected in the documentation that is required to underpin the formal procurement process.The bandwidth requirements of public sector users will, in most cases, range from 2 megabits upwards and will, in any case, require to be scaleable, to meet their projected future needs. They will also require guaranteed service levels. Provision will, therefore, complement the extension of ADSL to exchanges in the Pathfinder areas.
3. Each of the Pathfinder areas will be the subject of a separate procurement process and ultimately a separate Framework Agreement. Prior Information Notices were placed in the Official Journal of the EC and this has been followed up by a series of bilateral meetings with interested providers.
4. The first stage of the formal procurement process is the publication of Contract Notices inviting expressions of interest. These were published in November 2002 and the aim is to issue the Invitation To Negotiate documents to the selected bidders in early 2003. The project remains on course for the Framework Contracts to be awarded by late summer 2003.
5. The Pathfinder procurements will also provide access to the proposed new Spark national intranet for Scottish schools in those areas. The Spark intranet will provide a range of services and facilities tailored to the varying needs of pupils, teachers, education managers and others - all within a secure online web-based environment. The Spark intranet will serve a potential user base of some 800,000 individuals, providing them with access to an ever-expanding world of expertise, knowledge, interests and people.
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