It takes government purchasing teams an average of 22 months to make decisions about acquiring IT, a conference will hear, with surveys indicating it’s common to have at least six moderate or significant delays in the buying process.

VP Analyst at Gartner, Dean Lacheca, will outline insights into where the public sector is falling short on IT procurement at the Gartner IT Symposium and Expo on the Gold Coast next week.

The finding are based on research by Gartner, including a technology buying  behaviour survey released this month, which found the public sector has the longest average total buy cycle time of the other 12 industries analysed.

“Nearly half (48 per cent) of respondents reported six or more moderate or significant delays in the buying process,” the report says.

“The cumulative impact of these various delaying factors … added seven months, on average, to the public-sector buying cycle.”

The three stages of the buying process – exploration, vendor engagement and contract – can each take between three months and a year to complete.

Bogged down by risk aversion

The report is based on the responses of 1, 120 executives involved in tech evaluation and selection, including 79 from the public sector, who were surveyed over November and December 2021.

It cites one senior IT buyer as saying the process takes so long because it is deliberately risk-averse, so “users of the process fear it, they load everything imaginable they want into the tender with the hope of never having to do another the rest of their career”.

The survey found a typical public sector buying team is large and complicated, consisting of 12 participants, and often composed of low level operational staff with different and often conflicting objectives for a purchase.

Highly structured, rule-based and risk-averse procurement processes in the public sector often result in large buying teams with multiple stakeholders and influencers who have varying levels of commitment to the process.

Factors That Influence and Delay the Public Sector Buying Cycle, Gartner

“Highly structured, rule-based and risk-averse procurement processes in the public sector often result in large buying teams with multiple stakeholders and influencers who have varying levels of commitment to the process,” it says.

“The integrity of the process is often sacrosanct, sometimes at the expense of speed and outcomes.”

Senior government executives are also less likely to be involved in the technology acquisition process compared to other industry sectors because they want to avoid the perception of political interference, with 41 per cent of government C-suite executives involved in the purchase process compared to 55 per cent in the private sector.

 Speaking ahead of the conference Mr Lachea said procuring technology brings challenges to the public sector that aren’t usually faced in other industries, including red tape around grants and payments processes and siloed decision making.

He says lack of information is adding to the problem, with 68 per cent of public sector respondents attributing delays to problems getting information about products and implementation from the provider.

The Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2022 will be held on the Gold Coast on September 11-12.

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