My in box this morning included a notice that London 2012 is about to post a contract for a range of communication services. Good news, let's have a look. Following the links I eventually arrived at a page containing some basic info. It looked awful - it was unresponsive, it immediately wound me up, and it didn't deliver anything intuitive or useful. My heart sank - this could only mean one thing. London 2012 have outsourced e-tendering to Bravosolution, possibly the worst bit of web technology in existence.
Has anyone seen, or even worse, had the misfortune to have to try use this piece of @%$* that seems to have been built by nerds who never see daylight in about 1985? I cannot begin to describe what a usability crime it is. And what's more, they have spectacularly managed to bamboozle inept and ill informed procurement people into buying into huge public contracts. Their list of clients is certainly impressive which means that the misery of competing for public sector contracts is now compounded and hugely wide spread.
Apart from the usability crime aspect, I am certain that this system actually works against the very principle for which it is deployed. As , rather than make the process smoother, it makes it much much more cumbersome. So much so that I'm convinced many able, talented business that are capable of adding real value to public services will decline to participate, defeated at the first hurdle by this gross mess.
On top of this, if it could get any worse, is the fact that it completely undermines any commitment to accessibility that any of its customers may have. It does not use standards, favours PCs, of course, and will not work on many browsers. The fact that the BBC, TfL, and now, London 2012 have bought into this in order to find business partners to deliver major public services is, for me, professional negligence.
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