Currently 12,000 companies have their own Premier Pages set up for them, where their procurement staff can order from web pages listing equipment with specifications preconfigured to their requirements, as well as customer-service-related information like their individual purchasing histories and shipping updates.
Of course, the military has cocked up its procurement planning for decades, and the three services fight over the available cash.
Right now, it's all still in the planning stages; Philadelphia-based Wilco Electronics is hoping to set up a procurement deal for schools there and will be meeting with DataWind and presumably Philadelphia officials over the next month.
Against this background, the Department of Health commissioned a junior doctor, Jordan Lawrence, to visit each hospital and draw up a 'long list' of items nominated for procurement by clinical staff.
This is where declaring the opioid crisis a public health emergency under the Emergencies Act would make a genuine difference: it would speed up the procurement of funds for treatment programs that would otherwise get bogged down in parliamentary procedure.
Another reason for caution is that even though the Defense Department's 2002 budget includes a 7.9% increase in military spending, the largest in a generation, the budget for procurement and research and development spending is up just 4%, to $109 billion.
Gates' speech, which warned of "a dim if not dismal future" for NATO if its member countries, did not step up arms procurement and political will to participate in places like Afghanistan as real partners.
Countries blame complex procedures for procurement.
"For government, it's a new way to find out what the market has to offer in advance so that we can speed up formal procurement times".
Ian Taylor, director for procurement performance at the Department for Education and Skills, agrees.
