A rather strange tender from the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation (a state advisory body) 55 million rubles for the "organization of events aimed at energizing civil society and involving citizens in modernization processes"
Let’s not even get into the substance of it: whether this dubious Civic Chamber is needed at all, whom exactly they are planning to "energize" and how, and whether everyone who uses phrases like "involving citizens in modernization processes" ought to be subjected to a forced lobotomy. But that’s not the point. The point is that, as we can see from the classification and terms of reference (available for download here), the Civic Chamber is ordering something utterly ordinary and straightforward: the organization of conferences, round tables, and so on. There are plenty of firms that provide these services. It’s a highly competitive market. And this is where the tricks begin:
We’re reasonable people, and we can’t demand that the Civic Chamber include a detailed description of every single event in the terms of reference. Obviously, the detailed plan should be produced by whoever wins the tender. But surely they must have drawn up some kind of preliminary budget? Did they just pull the figure of 55 million rubles out of thin air, or is it based on some assumptions? What does "approximately 220 events" mean? What does "approximately 20 to 500 participants" mean? Suppose you’re a conference-organizing agency. You want to take part in the tender and make some money. Does this TOR tell you anything? Yes. It tells you they’re fiddling the numbers. The average event cost is 250,000 rubles—if there are 220 of them. But what if there are 200? Or 245? What if it’s 200 events for 20 people and 20 events for 500 people? What if it’s 219 events for 20 people and one event for 500? What if the 500-person event lasts one day? Or seven? To put it plainly, the economics change radically. And no agency without insider information about the real plans behind a tender like this would go near it. The Civic Chamber people managed to write some nonsense about the "World Café method," but they somehow couldn’t sensibly break down the terms of reference even to the level of: - Events with up to 30 participants: - in Moscow — 30 - In cities of the Volga Federal District — 10, in cities of the Central Federal District — 40 One large event for 500 people (in Smolensk) — 1 * Teleconferences — 7 to 10 Hearings: in Yekaterinburg — 3, in Volgograd — 1 and so *on Could this have been done? Yes. They were obliged to make calculations like that when drawing up a 55 million ruble budget. Fine. Let’s even assume none of that exists. Suppose the Civic Chamber wants to spend 55 million in budget funds (they were simply allocated the money, that’s all), but doesn’t know how. In that case, they should just say so: we want to a***ctivate civil society on such-and-such an issue, but we don’t know how. We have 55 million for this purpose. We are announcing a tender worth 1 million for the development of a detailed and comprehensive plan for how best to spend the remaining 54 million. A*** line of excellent experts would form, ready to take part in such a tender. Is that so difficult? No, it’s very easy—if you actually want to spend taxpayers’ money efficiently. But if what you want is window dressing, plus to skim off 15 million or so, then you do exactly what the Civic Chamber is doing.