Requirement Specification in Government IT Procurement

IT procurement represents a business process of importance, including the ability to articulate requirements that the procurement deals with. Furthermore, specifying requirements is of importance for both procurer, and potential supplier as it functions as central contractual element between the two. The purpose of the article is to show how functional and non-functional requirements are represented in current call for bids for the procurement of IT. 11 ‘call for bids’ were examined from a Swedish national procurement database. From the analysis of the bids, it can be concluded that the call for bids displays fuzziness in making a clear distinction between functional and non-functional requirements. From the discussion on this, a tentative procurement framework is suggested, aiming on increasing the logical transparency for the procurement of IT.