The end justifies the means? Or, how to ensure civil servants' bums are comfy while at work.

From a page 2 "hot news" story in TODAY (Aug 23), it looks like it is now the turn of the Attorney-General's Chambers and SPRING Singapore to hunker down in defensive mode/damage control/spin, etc -- because we taxpayers have now come to know that they had purchased a brand of office chair called Herman Miller (first made infamously known to taxpayers when it was revealed that the Ministry of Manpower had bought the said brand last year for more than $570 a piece).

http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC120823-0000052/AGC,-SPRING-defend-designer-chair-purchases
 

   
In the case of the AGC, the Herman Miller chairs were bought at $597 each; SPRING bought its batch for $650 each.

There seems to be certain similarities in the several cases, including the recent one regarding the Brompton brand of foldable bikes bought at $2,200 a pop:

* A blogger had somehow come across the purchase and had posted his/her discovery online. This typically went viral, followed by official reaction, as well as triumphant whoops from websites less than enamoured of the government. Notice too that the mainstream media have never labelled such action whistle-blowing (to be fair, such a label may be construed to imply impropriety);

* All such cases have been officially defended as having "complied with relevant procurement rules". This is emphasised ad nauseum. Concessions are made to tweak the rules if necessary, such as relaxing over-rigid (or over-lax, as the case may be) tender requirements.

* But no official will come down to the public perception level, and I mean that of the ordinary man/woman in the street, not the critics with an axe to grind. Apropos the chairs, I would imagine ordinary people -- me, for one -- would ask, "Isn't $570 to $650 per chair for civil servants, paid by tax-payers' money, a bit over-pampering their civil-servant bums? I could walk into, say, VHive and -- only if I'm in a spendthrift mood -- buy one of its upper-range chairs for, say, $300. And that's when I'm feeling self-indulgent. Junior can jolly well make do with a $200 chair at most, even if he may sit on it longer than I will be doing on my chair to merely relax in."

And if you tell me the Herman Miller chairs come with a 12-year warranty, I will ask: do chairs need to be regularly serviced, tyres and oil filters changed, etc, like cars? If a $200 chair lasts only five years, three such chairs over 15 years will cost $600.

As for the foldable bikes, we see ads every day offering such bikes at prices well below the $2,200 price. Granted, most of them may not be light enough, easily folded compactly or -- most importantly -- be built for everyday heavy-duty tasks. How then do we explain this ad I saw recently?...

  
So, this brand of rugged, military-use foldable bike at the regular price costs $2,099. But it can be sold -- at a sale price -- for $630. Assuming that people go into business to stay in business, there is a high mark-up in the regular price for this brand advertised above.

One can go on, but I think a recent ST commentary by an NUS academic, Associate Professor Ho Yew Kee, hit the nail on its head in his concluding remarks, highlighted in this picture caption below:

At least one site has reproduced his article:

http://ifonlysingaporeans.blogspot.sg/2012/08/towards-best-practice-in-procurement.html