In a long reply in parliament yesterday, Minister Austin Gatt lambasted Evarist Bartolo for an article he has written on a matter about which he had asked a parliamentary question but had not yet received a reply.
Dr Gatt pointedly referred to local company Computer Domain and pointed out at possible connections between this company and Mr Bartolo.
Computer Domain was the sub-contractor of a company which had been short-listed for a tender, and thus, with the annulment of the tender procedure, lost out. Computer Domain, the minister added, had also been involved in two preceding tenders about which Mr Bartolo asked questions and wrote articles. In one case, it would even seem that Mr Bartolo was suggesting that the particular tender should have been won by Computer Domain.
Dr Gatt invited Mr Bartolo to explain his connections with Computer Domain and why he is so ready to defend its interest even to the extent of not waiting for a reply and distorting facts.
Mr Bartolo’s question asked for an update on a MITA call for expression of interest for a strategic partnership for the provision of an E-Learning solution which closed on 11 November.
The minister, who later said he had waited till the period for an appeal was over before replying, claimed that without waiting for an answer, Mr Bartolo published an article on 16 May in which he concluded that it was not true the process had been annulled because of a possibility of a conflict of interest, that this claim is just a sham, and that the real truth is that a company near the government had not been short-listed.
The minister said the call for expressions of interest had been published on 18 September and closed on 11 November. There were nine offers and all were certified as conforming with the mandatory requirements.
The Evaluation Board was appointed by the MITA CEO on 30 November and the minister was not consulted on who was appointed. Through a public call, MITA had also chosen UK company IT Consulting Services Ltd, a company of international repute, which then commissioned three persons – Tom McMullan, Owen Lynch and Laurie O’Donnell – to do the consultancy work in Malta.
Nine companies submitted an offer:
1. Benchmark Softec, Excelsoft Technologies, and Digital Borneo
2. Blackboard International and Loqus Solutions
3. eLP
4. Frontier
5. Hewlett-Packard International Trade
6. IBM Malta
7. IX Consortium
8. Megabyte and SIVECO Romania, and
9. Young Digital Planet.
It is strange, the minister added, how Mr Bartolo knew all the names of the companies which submitted the offer but left out three companies – Excelsoft, Digital Borneo and the only Maltese company which participated, Megabyte.
On 10 December, the evaluating board was informed that Laurie O’Donnell had commercial links with a sub-contractor of one of the tendering companies. The board decided this person must not continue with the consultancy.
On 5 March, the MITA chairman was informed by the representative of Digital Borneo that in his opinion the consultants’ company had a conflict of interest with one of the tendering companies and that the exclusion of O’Donnell did not necessarily remove the conflict. This was the first time the chairman heard of the potential conflict of interest. On the same day, the chairman asked the CEO to investigate this allegation. Again, this was the first time the CEO heard of the allegation, since there was no mention of it in the evaluating board’s report which had been sent to him.
The CEO asked for legal advice and he was told that the evaluating board had acted correctly when it excluded Mr O’Donnell but it was more prudent to ignore the consultant’s report and either review it or seek another consultant.
The evaluating board thus drew up a second report and sent it to the MITA CEO who copied it to the board of directors on 26 April. In a meeting this board had with the minister two days later, the minister directed the board to stop the process and to issue another call for applications.
This is not the first time he had taken similar decisions, Dr Gatt said: he had done so a few months before the inauguration of Mater Dei when the IT tender was stopped when it emerged that a person from the government side could have been passing on information to the other side. About this, there are ongoing court proceedings.
This was the first time he had heard of the allegations, Dr Gatt added, without having the slightest idea who had been short-listed or not.
It is also clear, Dr Gatt concluded, that Mr Bartolo had been in contact with one of the bidders as there was no other way he could have known the circumstances he mentioned. Dr Gatt invited Mr Bartolo to reveal the name of this company. He also quoted comments said to be coming from companies involved in the tender. Again, Dr Gatt invited Mr Bartolo to name these companies.