Czech ministers met on Wednesday August 11, the first day after the summer recess, to discuss possible reforms to the government’s computer systems procurement policies. Dr Mirsolava Matousova, Head of Department of State Information System at the Ministry of the Economy – the body charged with the task of framing legislation regarding computer procurement and open systems standards across central and local government – also declared that she had received high-level requests to help draft statutes to prevent the abuse of data held on government-owned computer systems. The latter initiative follows the illegal sale of personal data on a million Czech citizens to Proctor & Gamble Co by civil servants in a minor scandal that hit the headlines last month. The officials, some of whom have since been dismissed, obtained the personal information from a computerised national register of Czech citizens. However, Dr Matousova asserted that the original installation of the multi-million dollar computer system that held the information had been conducted in a manner which lent itself to private profit being made by those able to access the system, and described some of those publicly accused over the sale as puppets. The contract to supply the computer system – based on 170 Wyse Technology Inc systems running Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix and Informix Corp’s eponymous relational database – was won in October 1991 but is still not fully operational; a fact Dr Matousova attributes in part to ‘conflict of interest’ within the Interior Ministry preventing the suppliers from being able to take on a full partnership role. Dr Matousova, who says the State Information System Department originally suggested regulating the use of government computer data in the spring of 1991 but was told in response haven’t you got better things to do, said that the value of experience gained from the procurement and implementation process probably exceeded the actual value of the contract, noting: No-one involved in the project would do things the same way again. On the issue of open system standards, Dr Matousova indicated that a decree passed in the spring of 1991 specifying XPG/3 compliance as mandatory, and outlining a number of other technical regulations and guidelines, might be watered down as adherence was proving costly and in some cases inappropriate for public sector organisations with heavy investments in old proprietary applications. While emphasising the benefits of open systems and expressing concerns over the signals that such a move might send, she described the spring 1991 decree as to some extent premature.
High degree of autonomy
Regarding government procurement methods themselves, which were developed at the same time along the lines of European Community norms with expertise provided with the aid of the British know-how fund, Dr Matousova indicated that mandatory codes had not always been implemented, stressing that a flexible personal relationship with suppliers had often proved a precondition for a successful selection procedure. Individual state institutions in Central and Eastern Europe are used to a high degree of autonomy in procurement, a situation often perceived within the public sector to be an integral feature of a democratic system of government. Dr Matousova absolved both Wyse and Informix of blame for the difficulties with the computerised registry of Czech citizens and also said IBM Corp was not to blame for the delayed implementation of a major project to automate the country’s tax system. However she cautioned that more progress was required from vendors, particularly in adapting their project management and systems integration expertise to the local market.
