E-Tenders Fail
July 14, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Some time last year I signed up for the e-tenders email. I thought I might have a hope in hell of winning business from the public sector. I applied for a few, didn’t get them, but when I saw who got them, I decided it’s not worth my while – I don’t have a track record of delivering public sector projects, so no matter how good my work is (and how superior it is to some of the project winners), I can forget about it.
It is not possible to simply click and remove yourself from the e-tenders email.
What? A Government approved vehicle is breaking the law?
Shocking but true.
The email ends with an old school double line – no mention of unsubscribe button here:
A quick shimmy on over to the e-tenders website, and it’s a little opaque. You’d expect you could stop your email newsletter by clicking on Notice Alerts Service. That is the logical place where you would manage your subscriptions to alerts. But no. You have to click on your personal details, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and that’s where you can stop things being sent to you.
At first I didn’t get this, so I hit contact us, asked them to remove me, and got the ‘we will respond to this in one working day.” That gives them til Wed at 6pm. Let’s see if they live up to that promise.
In the meantime, here’s to another government website that doesn’t adhere to its own rules. Should we let our friends at the Data Protection Commissioners know? 
Tags: e-tenders fail, irish government websites, public sector tendering process
