Early Christmas

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, at least for some very fortunate employees and officials of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).

Earlier this year, the GSIS bidded out a contract for the supply, delivery, installation, and configuration of a data center infrastructure and management system. To put it simply, the GSIS wants to avail of the latest that technology has to offer by moving their business to the “Cloud.”

With disaster after disaster hitting our nation, many businesses found themselves unprepared. Small to medium-scale businesses especially store their data in their computers, laptops, and other storage devices, without backing them up. In fact, 30 percent of Philippine SMEs do not backup their data. As a result, these businesses could not resume operations and data is lost forever. Had they done cloud backup, they would have been able to recover their computer files all via the Internet.

And so three companies, namely PLDT-affiliate IP Converge Data Services Inc., Sadz Solutions, and Indra submitted their bids. IPC submitted the lowest bid at P26 million, followed by Sandz with P43.5 million or almost double that of the lowest bidder, and Indra with P43.6 million.

On June 7, 2013, GSIS bids and awards committee for infrastructure and IT chairperson Eduardo Fernandez informed IPC that following post-qualification evaluation and upon verification of IPC’s eligibility, financial, and technical documents, and based on the report by GSIS’s technical working group on the non-compliance of IPC on certain hardware requirements, they have resolved to disqualify IPC for the award.

On Aug. 27, IPC wrote GSIS president Robert Vergara claiming among other things that the configuration files provided by GSIS to allow IPC to perform the POC (proof of concept) contained erroneous application codes, contrary to GSIS’ commitment under the bid documents that “AAO (GSIS’s application) functions included in the test script to be tested are in working order.”

IPC president Reynaldo Huergas, in his letter to Vergara, said that during the scheduled POC on May 16, IPC showed the error to GSIS’ ITSG and they confirmed the error in the files.

Huergas added that also in violation of GSIS’ commitment under the bid document, IPC was not given “personnel to support the setup and configuration of the compatibility POC requirement activities”, as a result of which IPC was left to implement and troubleshoot on its own all through the post-qualification process.

The IPC top honcho told Huergas that said events prevented the POC from pushing through on that day. It was rescheduled to May 24. But on the day of the POC, IPC found out that the new application codes provided by GSIS’ ITSG still would not run on IPC’s system.

IPC requested to reschedule the POC to the last day of the 7-day extension period, which is on May 28.

Upon further investigation internally, IPC found out that the configuration files needed by IPC to perform the POC (which were turned over to them by the GSIS end-user group in May) were found to contain erroneous application codes that would not allow IPC’s system to run GSIS’s application properly. In short, somebody at GSIS wittingly or unwittingly sabotaged the whole thing so that it would not work. Having pinpointed the particular error, IPC was able to fix this, which allowed the application to run correctly. IPC planned to show this to ITSG on the new POC date. On May 28, IPC was informed that the session would be postponed to a later date. Two weeks later or on June 13, IPC received the notice of post-disqualification.

Attempts by IPC for reconsideration were snubbed by GSIS. In one letter, Fernandez said that IPC only had three days to file a request for reconsideration and this was not met.

On Sept. 12, Vergara wrote Sandz solutions awarding the contract at a cost of P43.3 million.

A careful look at the circumstances surrounding the whole bidding process point to the conclusion that the process was designed to favor a particular bidder.

It was not only on IPC’s system that GSIS’ application did not work. It did not work also on Sandz’ and Indra’s so what GSIS should have done is to declare a failure of bidding. Instead, it awarded the contract to the second bidder, who posted a bid almost twice that of the lowest bidder.

Sandz has been a “suki” of GSIS, having bagged GSIS IT projects in the past. On one occasion, a personnel at the technical working group was overheard as telling an IPC staff that “mawawalan pa kami ng bonus dahil sa inyo.” Fernandez was also quoted as saying that it is beyond him since he merely relies on what the TWG decides when it comes to IT matters. Another official at the bids and awards committee likewise commented that “matagal na naming gusting mapalitan ang mga contractors sa IT pero wala kaming magawa.”

And again the matter of the erroneous code, which was enough to sabotage the whole process.

Had GSIS allowed IPC, as requested, to demonstrate that the application works after the error has been corrected, then the agency would have saved millions of pesos and secured the contract at half the cost. But the demeanor of GSIS personnel indicate that IPC would never be allowed to bag the contract.

Not so hidden agenda

• DDB wins Ad Summit Creative Campaign: Adobo Magazine has just reported that DDB Philippines will be handling creative requirements for Ad Summit Pilipinas, after winning a seven-way pitch earlier in the month. Other agencies in the pitch were McCann, IdeasXMachina, Publicis JimenezBasic, Havas Worldwide, Gallardo & Associates, and SLG. DDB was selected to do the campaign by a jury composed of Ad Summit Pilipinas creative co-chairs Raoul Panes and Madonna Tarrayo, DM9 JaymeSyfu executive creative director Louie Sotto, TBWASMP creative director Jake Tesoro, BBDO Guerrero executive creative director Tin Sanchez, and Y&R chief creative officer Badong Abesamis.  Ad Summit Pilipinas will take place from May 7 to 11 2014 at the Subic Bay Exhibition and Convention Center.

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