Australian PC maker slams Education's HP, Lenovo deal

Jeff Li, managing director of Pioneer Computers, has savaged the decision by the NSW Department of Education & Communities (DEC) to award its $250 million computer contract to HP and Lenovo.

The newly minted contract was open to bids from all the approved suppliers to the NSW whole of government ICT Hardware Agreement, a group of six companies that commenced in mid-2013 and counts HP, Lenovo and Pioneer as members, as well as Acer, Dell and Samsung.

The new DEC contract replaced the previous arrangement shared between Lenovo, Acer and Optima Technology Solutions, the Australian-owned white box builder that went under in 2008.

Li, as the boss of the only Australian company on the state government's approved supplier list, has turned to CRN to blast the education department for failing to award work to a local company.

"DEC should give local businesses a chance to compete. While we beat Lenovo in a $270 million education project in China and selling around the world, we can’t get a cent’s order from DEC in our own country, Australia. It looks like we need to be a foreign company and brand to qualify as supplier to DEC," wrote Li via email.

"The current DEC in NSW still kicked out local technology business, which is a really big problem to [the] local economy. Federal and state government are spending hundreds of million of dollars funding on Australian technology start-up companies while DEC will not place any cent’s order to local technology firms. Something is very wrong here."

Review the contract

Li wants to see the contract reviewed by the government.

In an email sent to CRN - which he also copied to the NSW Premier's default email account – Li wrote: "As president of [the Australian Technology & Investment Committee], winner of Premier’s Economic Participation Medal 2015 and on  behalf of local ICT business, I would like NSW Premier Mike Baird to investigate and review the detail of DEC contract."

A spokesperson for the Department of Education told CRN: "The NSW government procurement framework does not mandate that Australian business must be used when procuring goods or services. The aim of the procurement framework is to select goods or services fit for purpose that are value for money."

"DEC’s objective for this contract was to ensure a best value-for-money solution. A two-supplier strategy was identified in the early planning stages to award principal supplier status to the supplier that demonstrated the optimum value solution for the department and the second-placed supplier would be selected as the reserve supplier. The objective and selection strategy were highlighted to suppliers in the Request for Quotation.

"DEC invited and evaluated responses from all five suppliers [Samsung was not an the panel at the time] on the ICT Hardware Agreement for NSW government. DEC would have selected an Australian supplier if it ranked in either of the top two positions in line with its stated objective.

"DEC selects many Australian suppliers to deliver the products and services it requires, where they are able to demonstrate value. For this latest tender process, DEC selected HP and Lenovo on the basis they could demonstrate their ability to deliver the best solution in terms of quality of outcome and value to support teaching and learning for the students of NSW public schools," said the spokesperson.