Smart Public Service Delivery in a Cold Economic Climate
INDIVIDUAL AUCTION OF MOBILITY – DISABILITY AIDS AND HOUSEHOLD SUPPORT Submitted by Gemeente Spijkenisse / Municipality of Spijkenisse
EPSA2011121
Contact details of lead applicant
Case description
Organisation Address Country
Since the Law on Social Support, in Dutch: Wmo, was passed on 1 January 2007, the city of Spijkenisse has been using a reverse eAuction to purchase household assistance. Spijkenisse wanted to carry out a responsible, customer-friendly and future-proof policy, and in the past four and a half years the system has proven to yield the desired results. The delivery of certain mobility and disability aids (from now: MDAs) has become the responsibility of the city of Spijkenisse since 1997: i.e. wheelchairs, power wheelchairs, bath and toilet aids (for instance: bathroom chairs and toilet seats), mobility scooters, patient lifts, adaptive bicycles (for instance: tandems and tricycles). These devices used to be purchased from one supplier.
Municipality of Spijkenisse Raadhuislaan 106 3201 EL Spijkernisse the Netherlands
Contact Person Annemiek Roerhorst Function Advisor Email a.roerhorst@spijkenisse.nl Administrative level of lead applicant Local Size of organisation >100 Number of people involved in the project 6-10 Type of sector Public health and social welfare/affairs Key words of project Optimally market-driven, allocation, innovation, efficiency, rewarding good service
Because of the success of the eAuction for household support and the Best Practice Certificate received at the EPSA 2009, it was decided that the MDAs should be purchased using a similar auction system. To this end, an innovative tender system was introduced. In the usual tender, a certain quantity of MDAs is granted to the winner of the tender for a specific number of years. In Spijkenisse the object of the tender is formed by the admittance to the internet auction through a framework agreement. The framework agreement will be granted to all suppliers that agree with the maximum all-in monthly rental price for the different MDAs and that meet the quality demands in the specifications. The individual applications for the MDAs are put on the internet auction and contracted suppliers can offer discounts on the all-in monthly rental price, which has been maximised in the tender beforehand by the city council. In this way, suppliers themselves can try and obtain their desired market share in the city. The reverse auction can be seen as an awarding of contracts at customer level. How the reverse auction works: The personal details of the customer are not visible in the auction. Suppliers only see the requested MDA, the necessary options, information about the required sizes of the MDA and the first three digits of the postal code. Based on this information, they decide on their price. In order to prevent a situation in which customers are not catered for (which is unlikely, because there is always one supplier interested in the order), all suppliers are obliged to bid on every application. If the application does not appeal to a supplier (because, for example, they do not have a matching second-hand MDA in their depot), they can offer a minimal discount. The concept of the internet auction is that the MDA is bought at a price that conforms to the market, and that second-hand MDAs which are still in a good condition will be used. The system offers the opportunity to include robot variables (additional criteria) that may lead to a supplier other than the cheapest. Experience shows that adding any extra criterion results in a (slight) rise in cost. At this point, the average customer satisfaction is an additional criterion.
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