I think you're being a little unfair to the civil servant who has to follow the law regarding procurement.
I once knew someone who had to solicit 3 bids and document them to buy a $500 camera for local government. They weren't thinking "I am useless and craven", they were thinking "this is silly but I have to do it".
With all the hassle a government contract can bring, it's just not worth it for anything lower.
Screenshot of the top 3 results on Google shopping ought to do it
Yup. Governments have to follow all the laws, which often companies can ignore in the interests of speed.
Also, governments are large bureaucracies, with all the process that entails. And because there's no real benefit for them in delivering quicker, but lots of risk in delivering badly, this sort of stuff happens.
And even if doesn't, writing five online shops to send you a written offer takes a couple minutes and results in the same or lower prices
Procurement for such small items can be quick and sane. It's the larger items where rules tighten and procurement portals or bidding become mandated that are problematic
Nothing takes 'a couple minutes' when you have to sit down and research the five online shops, find if they are approachable, if they will deal with the restrictions of your purchasing department, find out how to submit a query. Many online shops just have a purchasing portal. Find the product, buy it here, pay for it and wait.
So loosely I purchase items at my work from a budget that I am allocated in an organisation that is ultimately responsible to the UK government. I need to justify that the items I am ordering are reasonably priced, and the organisation would really really like to have the goods before any money goes out. That means they want to place an order, receive the goods and and invoice, and then pay the invoice. Many online shops don't want to deal with that. We have accounts set up with many companies, but not all. If I want to buy some reams of 160gsm A4 white card (for example, the other day), that whole process is going to take at least 10 minutes. Some of our suppliers don't sell exactly that. Is 240gsm ok? I've got to go back to the person who wants it (no btw, I had to go find some and take it to them for comparison). More esoteric items are going to take longer. What exactly do I want to order?
So yeah, procurement is simple when you are at home with an amazon account. The items will be here tomorrow!
edit: oh, I didn't mention the free delivery.. a box of white card doesn't get me free delivery. Is there something else I can add onto that? Ok, the order will have to wait..
> I need to justify that the items I am ordering are reasonably priced
Unfortunately it sounds like the process is misaligned with the intention. I doubt this mechanism actually works for efficient budgeting and even when it appears to work, it’s probably at the cost of standard quality.
For a government contract we budgeted somewhere between 50k and 100k to change a deployment script.
I was against it, but "you know, if they don't do it, they no longer give a warranty on the solution", type of bullshit. Yeah 60md of warranty? My client are a bunch of fools.
Like ONG, bribes and extracting public money is the first target.