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2.1 Deputy G.P. Southern of St. Helier of the Minister for Treasury and Resources regarding the level of response to the Request for Information on the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (G.S.T.) information management system:
Would the Minister inform Members how many responses were received to the Request for Information (R.F.I.) over the implementation of the G.S.T. (Goods and Services Tax) information management system and whether the response rate was lower than anticipated? If so, what measures has he put in place to deal with this, and will he give Members details of the progress of the Request for Proposal (R.F.P.) process now underway?
Senator T.A. Le Sueur (The Minister for Treasury and Resources):
The R.F.I. was issued earlier in the year as a first step in a G.S.T. management system procurement process to establish the scope of the market in terms of suppliers' interest, estimate baseline costs and extract information ideas in order to develop the R.F.P.; 3 formal written responses and one verbal expression of interest in the R.F.I. were received. This response was commensurate with the specialised nature of the request and I was neither surprised nor disappointed that only 4 responses were received. After evaluating the responses to the R.F.I., it was agreed to follow an open procurement in respect of the R.F.P. On 10th October, the R.F.P. was sent to those organisations that had responded to the R.F.I. and a procurement notice was also issued in the Jersey Evening Post and the Financial Times. The closing date for submissions is 10th November and it is still early in the process, but already 2 other organisations in addition to those previously mentioned had expressed interest, and one is visiting the Island to obtain more information on Thursday, 26th October.
- Deputy G.P. Southern :
In the light of the Minister's lack of surprise about the low response rate, why then in the preamble to the request for proposal process does it say this was a surprisingly low number?
Senator T.A. Le Sueur :
That may have been a surprise to some people, but it was not particularly a surprise to me, because I think this sort of issue is very specialised and Jersey is a relatively small market, so there are only a small number of people with expertise in this market, but they do not necessarily want to deal with an operation as small as this. So, for my part, Sir, I was not unduly surprised.
- Deputy G.P. Southern :
Is the Minister confident that the bidding process to handle this procedure will be sufficiently competitive?
Senator T.A. Le Sueur : Yes, Sir.