Fierce battle for two more MCTI projects

The bids for the 24 IT projects proposed by the Ministry of Communications and IT (MCTI) and passed in May by the Group for Promoting Information Technology (GPTI) are still in progress. The bids submitted for the “E-procurement system” and “E-referendum” pilot projects were publicly opened yesterday.

The “E-procurement system” entails developing a pilot for an application to allow public administration institutions to purchase products and services via the Internet. The pilot project is destined to procurement handled through the World Bank.

The system will be possible to expand later so that it would include electronic payments, delivery status control and integration into the management system of the purchasing agency. The first “client” of the system will be MCTI itself, as minister Dan Nica has said on several occasions.

Nine companies showed interest in this project: IBM Romania, Softwin-IPACRI, Net Consulting, Akela Informatique, Integrator, ROMSYS, Asesoft COM, Hewlett-Packard Romania, Lasting Systems.

The “E-referendum” project entails developing a pilot for an application to allow citizens to express their opinions on a topic of national interest, in form of a referendum. The system will be possible to later expand to local or regional elections.

Ten bids were submitted for this project by about the same companies as for the “E-procurement system”: IBM Romania, I.P.A., NetConsulting, Akela Informatique, Integrator, ROMSYS, Asesoft COM, Hewlett-Packard Romania, Lasting Systems, Siveco Romania.

The winners would be announced in 15 days, MCTI said. So far, only three of the 24 projects endorsed in GPTI’s first meeting have their winners announced.

The winner of the “Video-conference on the web” project was Compaq Computer Romania, the winner of the “Electronic information services for the people – info-stand” project was Intrarom SA Bucharest, while the winner of the “Virtual market – goods and services purchasing system” was TotalSoft to have come up with a proposition worth a little more than 617 million lei.