CEPiK: tough tender

By Aleksander Nowacki

The Central Registry of Vehicles and Drivers (CEPiK) tender, commissioned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration (MSWiA), is one of the biggest of its kind in what has turned out to be yet another lean year for the IT industry. Small wonder, then, that the country's largest integrators are at one another's throats vying for the contract. This has generated a flurry of media interest, apparently to the ministry's displeasure.

After unnamed executives of participating firms were quoted as saying that the deadline was "unrealistic," the ministry apparently banned the bid participants from speaking to the media.

"The ministry is angry about the leaks and has asked us not to release any further information until the ban is lifted," says a source at one of the bidding firms. This failed, however, to stop further comments from "sources close to the bids," and accusations have been flying back and forth ever since the five bids were finally opened last Monday. The tender was delayed twice, to allow for over 700 questions from 72 interested firms to be answered.

The players

Softbank, ComputerLand, Com-Arch, IBM and Ster-Projekt eventually emerged as the competitors to land a zł.350 million contract.

The cheapest bid was placed by Softbank, in cooperation with South African firm Face Technologies, whose ready-made solution has already been implemented in its native country.

Softbank, it was unofficially revealed, named a price of zł.188 million for the system; zł.100 million less than ComputerLand (CL), which is running in cooperation with Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. CL had previously been thought the favorite, and most likely to win the tender. It now appears to have lost its pole position, as the price element is weighted as 55 percent of the bid evaluation. Solution quality accounts for 25 percent, while service quality and security of the system account for 10 percent each.

"Softbank must have failed to understand the terms of the tender," said a source inside one of the bidding firms. It is also said that "independent IT experts" have voiced concerns whether a ready-made solution, which Softbank says is "tried and tested" in South Africa, would be adaptable to the local PESEL, REGON and KRPTK registration systems.

The game

The contract consists of two stages, as it is meant to be up and running by January 1 of next year, when it would start to be filled with the data. Softbank's competitors allege that its South African sub-contractor would be unable to meet the criteria of the latter part of the project.

"We want (the winner) to be a company already present on the local market," says a source familiar with the selection criteria.

Sources close to Softbank counter that it is the only company to make an offer that "allows to realistically hope that the deadline would be met." These people also say that there were no grounds to question the reliability of the Face Technologies' solution. The fact that it had been implemented in another country also made it possible for the company to compete on price.

Meanwhile, MSWiA has come under fire for delays in the tender procedures.

"We want CEPiK ready as quickly as possible," says Rudolf Borusiewicz, secretary general of the Association of Polish Counties (ZPP), which will partake in the CEPiK implementation. "There have been too many delays as it is." He admits that it is difficult, however, "to think of the (January 1) deadline as realistic." His concerns mirror those of people inside the bidding firms, which were voiced unofficially.

The ministry dismisses these concerns. A ministry spokesperson says, "it is to be assumed that since five firms have placed bids, they consider themselves capable of meeting the deadline." It is, however, widely said that such publicized cases as Prokom's failure to meet deadlines for its PZU Życie contract would appear to undermine this trust.

The ministry said that "the tender would be decided as quickly as possible," although "it is expected to take between three and four weeks." That leaves less than three months until the deadline for the system's implementation. In view of the developments to date, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.