Johannesburg, 04 Apr 2019
The Global Digital Marketplace aims to help international governments make their procurement more transparent, and to boost their digital, data and technology sectors. It builds on the success and expertise gained through the Digital Marketplace in the UK.
The team is working with national and regional governments in South Africa, Mexico, Colombia, Indonesia and Malaysia. They're now in discovery, researching the digital procurement landscape in those countries. The aim is to figure out the most useful work to do in the next phase of the project, and, ultimately, to help tackle corruption globally.
Rainmaker is thrilled to be part of a team of about 20 people, from GDS and five supplier partner organisations. While that might sound like a recipe for mayhem, the project was set up this way on purpose. Here's why.
The GDS team wasn't big enough to do the discovery on its own. They could have looked for a supplier to help, but the global scope and timing of the work probably would have limited bidding to large organisations, and they were concerned about being dependent on a single large supplier. GDS also wanted to open up opportunities to a broad range of potential partners.
It was crucial to find specific and relevant expertise, and, of course, to get maximum value for the contracts. To do those things, it was important for bidding to be open and competitive, and not limited to big, global organisations.
The project is still a work in progress; the team is in Malaysia this week, and South Africa next week, but the results so far are encouraging.
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