GOB Switches to Smart for Licenses of Microsoft Office 365
Belize
And with all the questions and concerns expressed by UDP Leader, Patrick Faber the government was quick to issue a press release. According to the release local and regional authorized resellers of Microsoft Office 365 Products were invited to submit quotes for the renewal of the Government’s Office 365 subscription. And with that invitation, the regional entity, Inova Solutions, SMART and Belize Telemedia Limited entered the limited tendering process. CITO had requested that all bids be password protected to keep the process fair and transparent. Password-protected bids were subsequently received via email from the three invited companies. The Bid Opening Committee consisted of three CITO officials, the Director of Procurement United at the Ministry of Finance Artemio Osorio and Finance Officer ,Erlinda Gonzales. All stakeholders agreed to open the bids in alphabetical order and that the evaluation would proceed iteratively until all three bids were assessed. During the live bid opening sessions, each tender submitted, in the virtual chat room, the password to open the tender document that they had submitted. CITO confirmed to all stakeholders that the Bids were still in a locked state before proceeding to unlock them. BTL provided a three (3) year proposal for the renewal along with value-added benefits at a value of $10.6 million and a one year proposal at $3.5 million. Inova Solutions’ proposal was for one year at $3.43 million while SMART’s proposal was for one year at $3.3 million. The Bid from Smart was the lowest. The Bid Evaluation Committee presented the findings of the Evaluation to the Ministry of Finance and recommended the award of contract to the lowest evaluated responsive Tenderer. The Ministry of Finance accepted the recommendation of the Bid Evaluation Committee and agreed to award the contract to Speednet Communications Limited (SMART). During a press conference on Tuesday, Chairman of the Board of Directors Mark Lizarraga explained that SMART simply won the bid.
Mark Lizarraga, Chairman, BTL Board of Directors: “I know of one instance of – I think it was the software licenses that went out to consult. There was bid that was put out which we lost. Which we lost. The other company unfortunately came in cheaper than us. We had margins, I think we had margins of about 10% and the other company we’re told won the contract because they bid less than us.”
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