Technically, the Government says that it wants to – and does – encourage small and medium sized companies (SMEs) to bid for, and get, Government contracts. The Government says that this will provide the taxpayer with greater value for money because SMEs tend to be more creative, flexible and so on – and also tend to be cheaper because they don’t have the overheads of a larger firm.

All this is, of course, true.

However, when it comes to actually awarding Government contracts, the SMEs – and, while this could be a general comment, the e-learning sector can only comment on its own case – don’t tend to even get on the shortlist for the contracts.

This is for a number of reasons, including:

(a)  The SMEs don’t have the (spare) manpower to devote time to researching the Government contract opportunities and then preparing the ‘pitch’/ submission.

(b)  The SMEs don’t have the experience and skill to complete the tender documents – and don’t know what the Government procurers are really looking for.

(c)  The Government procurers haven’t heard of the SMEs and so don’t know how likely they are to ‘still be in business in x years time’ (the ‘no one got fired for buying an IBM machine’ argument).

Unfortunately, when it comes to corporate e-learning, the Goverrnment does not even recognise that the sector exists. Two Government reports on e-learning around the turn of this century completely ignored the corporate e-learning sector and, when asked why this was, the Government – allegedly – replied that it had no information about the sector, so it did not think it existed. It only recognises the academic (higher education) e-learning sector – which is something quite different.

Anecdotally, the problem is that, when an e-learning contract comes up with the Government, it tends to turn to one of the large management consulting firms or a large IT supplier. These firms are ‘known’ in Government circles but they tend not to have the expertise to do exactly what the Government requires.

So the country gets some ‘e-learning’ software/ systems that is over-priced, inefficient and not up to the job. This is bad news for the British taxpayer – but the Government (and its procurers) don’t know how much better things could be because they never get to find out!

Similarly, there are those who know about these things who say that Britain is a net exporter of e-learning, despite the competition from India and the US in world markets – along with the increasing competition from other, emerging countries. So far, the UK e-learning industry has managed to do this with no help whatsoever from the UK Government (because, as we know, the Government does not believe that the UK corporate e-learning industry exists).

However, if the Government did know that the sector existed, it might like to foster and encourage the export of e-learning – and turn a £427m a year industry into something much larger, with a consequent boost to jobs in the UK, incomes, output and so on.