The MOF Tender Briefing in Putrajaya

My brother is sitting in a classroom half across the globe in Boston, USA and is chatting with me using Gmail Chat while I'm writing this post. I wish I was in his place. 3 years ago, I brought him into the previous company I joined just to accompany me since I was the only employee in that company and was feeling lonely. I then brought in a few other guys and girls into the company before I sent them off because I was planning to leave as well. It was then my brother's turn to bring me into his company and I'm now doing what I've been doing all along, serving the most important department in the company in doing marketing and bringing in sales.

Anyway, being in the sales and marketing department is not so bad after all. I get the chance to go to places I've never think of going. For example, yesterday I went to a tender briefing at one of the most powerful Ministry in Malaysia, The Ministry of Finance (MOF). The tender briefing was to invite vendors and developers to come out with a proposal to develop an asset management system for them to use. It was kind of a surprise to find out that a lot of the government agencies especially one of the most powerful ministry of all, doesn't have an asset management system. Well, who said adopting new technology is easy right?

The Ministry of Finance building located in Putrajaya is quite awesome. Check the picture I took outside of the MOF building:



Inside the building host hundreds of government department offices mainly related to the financial segment. The area they have is pretty huge. If you've ever went to offices in KL, in Putrajaya, you'll have so much space that you might get tired just from walking to the bathroom. That is of course if you are not used to walk around and just drive around a lot. I know this because I used to drive around a lot instead of walking which I should be doing for a healthy living.

Back to the tender briefing. This is a screenshot of the theater inside the MOF building:



The facility is not so bad. Unfortunately, my company decided not to proceed with this opportunity because of some issues concerning the right of the source code and licensing. It is however a good opportunity if your company is a web-based PHP developer since the government is really interested to adopt the web-based open source kind of application. The tender will be closed on the 3rd of December so if you are a developer and can create the asset management module that they have specify in their tender document, you should better hurry up and team up with companies who had attend the tender briefing. My company welcomes that as well.

It was a great experience getting this opportunity to go to places I never would have think of being. However, I still wish I was in Boston, USA. Maybe I should work hard assisting and getting more accounts for my company. Then they'll send me off somewhere. That's a great plan, don't you think so? Hehe..