1 a) Yes, SARS replaced Oracle with BBD through a deviation process;
This was due to the fact that Oracle UK initially offered to review the offering against SARS’ requirements. Alternative proposals were put forward, but it quickly became apparent that SARS’ functional needs as agreed with Siebel, far exceeded what Oracle intended to deliver regarding scope, cost and implementation timelines.
b) The replacement was justified as follows:
Extensive discussions were conducted with Oracle in an attempt to rescue the transaction and bring it back in line with SARS’ original understanding, namely that it:
c) Accenture – came into SARS through a tender process in 2005 to appoint a strategic partner to assist SARS with the Modernisation Programme
The 2006 SARS records that have been reviewed by the current procurement leadership team reflects that the selection of the three entities (i.e. IBM, Accenture and BB&D) was based on the industry knowledge of the then Strategy, Modernisation and Technology senior staff. In circumstances relating to the replacement of the Oracle transaction BB&D was then chosen from the listed primarily because of price consideration.
2 a) The reason for not inviting competitive bids and instead extending the service providers’ contracts (i.e. Accenture, BB&D and others) was considered to be due to exceptional reasons which mainly centred on the need for natural continuation of the projects where previous work was carried out by the same service providers, thus presenting a clear advantage over competition. SARS wanted to also ensure consistent engagement with the same service providers in order to avoid a risk of information being disclosed to the public as the project was linked to taxpayer and SARS employee’ information.
b) The extensions of both Accenture and BBD were legal and compliant with the relevant legislation and regulations.
c) Accenture was selected through a tender process. BB&D was appointed through a deviation.