Electronic procurement across the New Zealand Government (IT vignette) 2009-70.1

In 2001, the government of New Zealand began a project called GoProcure to implement electronic procurement in government agencies. The project was managed by the E-Government Unit (EGU) of the State Services Commission, and its fundamental premise was that it would be self funding. The EGU would pay for the pilot phase, but the whole project would ultimately be paid for from annual subscriptions by the agencies that agreed to participate in the project. Agencies would be free to participate or not, as they wished. The GoProcure project was divided into two phases: a pilot phase and – if the pilot was successful – an operational phase. Proceeding to this phase was conditional on enough agencies committing to use the system to meet its full costs over five years. But as the project unfolded, problems arose, and go-live dates pushed back, and soon the viability of GoProcure was in doubt.

This is a vignette version of the larger case study (Case 2005-47 GoProcure: public sector electronic procurement) about Go-Procure and considers issues raised by a cross-agency project. The case includes four discussion questions.