[Random-bits] Sarah Ryle on MS/UK complaint re Inland Revenue software

[James Love]

http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,346184,00.html
									
Microsoft's Revenue deal nets complaint 
Sarah Ryle 
Sunday July 23, 2000 

An exclusive deal between Microsoft and the Inland
Revenue has provoked a complaint to the Office of
Fair Trading about alleged anti-competitive
behaviour. 

The complaint, supported by Basda, the computer
software industry's professional body, says the
Revenue is acting unfairly by promoting a Microsoft
program and supplying it free to people wanting to
file tax returns online. 

Questions are being asked about the role of Phil
Stradling, a Microsoft staff member seconded to the
Revenue. He supervised the 12 months of work
which created the system. 

Basda's chief executive, Dennis Keeling, said it was
Stradling who invited him to recruit from among his
350 company members for an official working party		
which originally consisted of just Microsoft and Which? 
Soft ware magazine. Keeling's 20 recruits
were initially suspicious that they would devote time
to the project to Microsoft's benefit, with no gains
for themselves. 

One of those companies, Forbes Computer Systems,
devised the format now used by the Revenue to
facilitate the Microsoft software. Managing director
David Forbes is furious that his tax returns package
is among those which have effectively been elbowed
out of the market by the deal with Microsoft. 

'The fact that the person in charge of the process is
on the Microsoft staff does not look good,' he said.
'They have taken the market leader and given it
preferential treatment. It has all been an absolute
waste of time. We were given repeated guarantees
that this would not happen. We were told it would be
a level playing field.' 


   [snip]


-- 
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
v. 1.202.387.8030, fax 1.202.234.5176
love@cptech.org, http://www.cptech.org