Universal Jobmatch – Tender Scam

So whilst just as much of the public is up-in-arms about the Fake Jobs Scam as there are fake jobs (around 95%) its is nothing compared to the financial scandal surrounding the tendering process. The value far exceeds £1m so its classified as serious fraud. Hat tip to refuted for pointing out about the £950,000 Universal Jobmatch payoff.

A tweet by Simon Jones provides a link to a Freedom of Information request detailing about two tenders for the Universal Jobmatch system – we reveal below further details including how Monster appeared to be third in the initial results of the first tender but managed to win the second tender – you can view the full FOI here (pdf).

Full Credit to Andy Hyams on WhatDoTheyKnow for making the FoI request!

First Tender

Evaluation Scores

Methods Consulting Limited  (Joint bid with Jobsite UK (Worldwide) Limited)	83 / 100
Steria Limited	81 / 100
Monster Worldwide Limited	66 / 100
Hewlett Packard	61 / 100

Contract Amount

Steria Limited	£14,998,351.64
Methods Consulting Limited (Joint bid with Jobsite UK(Worldwide) Limited)	£19,952,786.13
Hewlett Packard	£20,785,556.41
Monster Worldwide Limited	£30,692,936.09

Methods Consulting Ltd’s joint bid with Jobsite UK clearly scored the best and provides the second best value (assuming Steria Limited’s costing were too cheap and unrealistic…) so they surely are the winners?

HP did really badly at the scores and were relatively expensive.

Monster Worldwide thought they could stick in a HUGE bid and milk the Government. Pre-recession they all would have  likely bid so high but emphasis is now on value for money more than ever.

Note: colour system is my addition.

Second Tender

So when it came back up for tender a few months later guess who managed to not only improve their score but to meet the score with a big margin of excellent?  94 is pretty much perfect as far as tendering goes. HP appears not to have got involved in the second tender.

Monster Worldwide Limited	94 / 100
Methods Consulting Limited (Joint bid with Jobsite UK (Worldwide) Limited)	88 / 100
Steria Limited	78 / 100

How for the contractual amount…  

Steria Limited	£14.45m
Monster Worldwide Limited	£15.11m
Methods Consulting Limited (Joint bid with Jobsite UK (Worldwide) Limited)	£20.44m

So Steria Limited made some cost savings to make them more competitive, they were the cheapest (again!) and this time their score was worse… perhaps the cost cutting damaged their point scoring ability or perhaps the scoring was fixed to prevent the DWP choosing  Steria Limited instead of Monster Worldwide, who had little higher price? We will let you make your own minds up.

Methods Consulting Limited (along with Jobsite – joint bid) raised their price slightly… this seems spot on with the increase in costings due to the delay from the former tender being voided.

Monster Worldwide Limited managed to jump from a poor score of 66 to an exceptional 94… and their price more than halved!!!

Guess who won? Well you know… Monster Worldwide.

Tender Fraud

This is serious multi-million fraud of the taxpayer, not limited to the winning company but from insiders at the Government who clearly made sure Monster Worldwide won the tender process the second time around. Furthermore, the company that should have won fair and square had the previous awarding stripped from them and paid £950,000 in compensation.  The DWP will not reveal why they put the contract back out to tender. We know its not fraud as 1) they wouldn’t be allowed to enter the second tender and 2) they wouldn’t be paid any compensation.

Insider fraud? We at Ipswich Unemployed Action thinks so. We can argue that from previous experience or luck, that they managed to improve their scores… they (Monster) were clearly not sure what range the bids came in for… £30.6m was far out of the running (so was their score too) so someone must have (whether actively helped to defraud the taxpayer or careless unprofessionally disclosed the values of the other bidders…) helped Monster secure the contract when in reality they had no chance in hell of doing so.

What we would like to know whether anyone connected with Monster Worldwide sent a bribe to the Government or the political party in charge (any bribes to Government employees or ministers, or political donations) or whether anyone connected to Monster Worldwide is part of any Tory (but not limited to) gentlemen’ s club, being a friend of a minister or the Prime Minister.