On July 28, 2016, the Kyiv City Council Executive Office, following a tender held on July 1, 2016, accepted Miranda LLC's bid for the development of application software, specifically the creation of the Kyiv City Community Registry information system. The price of the service was UAH 1,850,000.00, with a higher bid of UAH 1,100,000.00 available.
A total of ten enterprises participated in the competitive bidding: Scientific and Implementation Firm TMSOFT LLC, Biztech LLC, Miranda LLC, Intellect-Soft LLC, Info Plus Computer Technology Center PJSC, Main Information and Computing Center KP, Hertz LLC, Inline Group West LLC, Ukrainian Special Systems State Enterprise, and the Scientific and Research Institute of Applied Information Technologies PJSC.
Among all the participants, the most cost-effective proposals were submitted by Info Plus Computer Technology Center PJSC (UAH 996,960), Hertz LLC (UAH 1,100,000), and Intellect-Soft LLC (UAH 1,501,990). Unfortunately, all proposals from these participants were rejected by the customer's tender committee.
A detailed analysis of the proposal rejection protocol revealed that the reasons for rejecting Intellect-Soft LLC and Info Plus Computer Technology Center PJSC were indeed significant, but the customer was most hasty in rejecting the proposal from Hertz LLC.
In order to reject the proposal of the above participant, the customer decided that the calculation of the local cost of the service does not include the cost of a license for the right to use software for cryptographic protection of information, and the provided license agreements do not contain a list of such protection tools and provide the participant only with the right to use such tools, instead of their exclusive use.
Without going into detail about the technical concepts related to the subject of the procurement, it's worth noting that the participant, Hertz LLC, provided absolutely all the necessary documents stipulated in the competitive bidding documents, and the bidding organizer simply began nitpicking the content of the submitted documents. Moreover, the competitive bidding documents did not contain the requirements cited by the customer as the reason for rejection.
As it turns out, the tender committee of the Kyiv City Council's Executive Office is working tirelessly to come up with reasons to reject the most cost-effective proposals rather than save taxpayers' money. Of course, feeling a "thank you" from one "relevant" bidder is much more satisfying than hearing it from a million taxpayers.
To prevent the loss of taxpayer funds, the Rule of Law public organization appealed to Kyiv's regulatory and law enforcement agencies, as well as to the tender customer, demanding an investigation into the illegal actions of officials, holding those responsible accountable, and terminating the contract.
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