Former operators of NPS e-tenders website apologise for email

The former operators of the State’s National Procurement Service website e-tenders has had to apologise after it used the NPS database to email clients while criticising the new version of the website.

The NPS e-tenders portal, which advertises state contracts, is now operated by Swedish company EU Supply, but was run by Millstream Associates in Dublin from 2003 until earlier this year.

In emails sent on Tuesday Millstream contacted clients whose details are on the NPS database and criticised the revamped e-tenders website and advertising its new mytenders.ie site, telling recipients it will “offer you the same reliable source of information on business opportunities from the Irish public sector, as well as the transport, energy and water industries”.

The Millstream email also stressed that it had complied with eight key data protection rules and asked recipients to confirm whether they wanted to use the mytenders.ie service.

Yesterday, EU Supply issued emails to the same clients and stressed that “mytenders is NOT e-tenders”, adding: “The National Procurement Service has been made aware that a number of Suppliers to the public sector have received unsolicited emails and invitations to a service called mytenders. These emails are from Millstream Associates, with a Dublin based address.

“The National Procurement Service did not give any authorisation to Millstream or any other party to make any contact with Suppliers in relation to the mytender service.

“The National Procurement Service is proactively considering the data protection issues arising from any unsolicited emails to suppliers.”

Yesterday Tim Williams, managing director of Millstream Associates, said the company had spoken with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner and had been advised to issue emails apologising for the unsolicited emails sent earlier this week.

The email said that Millstream would delete the contact details on its database and added: “As the previous operator of the e-tenders website we had access to the contact details for all of the registered users, but as the Data Protection Commissioner’s office has stressed we should not have used this in order to market our new service.”

Mr Williams said the initial email had only ever been intended as “a one-off mail shot”.

But he said mytenders would continue to compete with e-tenders and that it was in a position to republish any material that features on the e-tenders site.