The procurement practices and policies of Commonwealth libraries are adversely affected by AGPS's invoicing and customer service. We recommend that a review of AGPS's supply of material through bookshops, mail order services, subscriptions and standing orders proceed and that librarians be involved in the review. Supply of consolidation and accessing of journals Supply of library cataloguing and indexing and related services Supply, delivery and installation of library bracket shelving and ancillary library furniture. In the twelve months from September 1992 over eight million dollars were spent against these contracts. Two of the contracts have exclusively Australian suppliers.
All contracts have Australian agents who employ Australian staff to deliver the services.
To the present the Libraries have done most of the work involved in preparing the technical specification for the publications and cataloguing contracts, forming the assessment panel which reviewed tenders and preparing submissions for the delegate. Ensuring that the contract has worked, ie. It is not equitable for small business particularly as they cannot get the big discounts because they are moving smaller amounts of material, and in general these are the Australian suppliers. Unlike some the big contracts like PE44 for computer supply, these contracts have not been subject to great variation during the periods of supply. Therefore there has not been a great ongoing workload for Purchasing Australia during the period of the contact.