Companion guide

Buying software as a Singapore government agency

The main guide explains how we work. This one covers the part that is specific to public-sector buyers: which sourcing tier a piece of work sits in, what counts as one requirement, and what makes hosting severable from a build. Everything here is quoted or paraphrased from published MOF and GeBIZ material, with the sources listed at the end.

We are a vendor, not your procurement advisor. Nothing here is a recommendation about how to classify a purchase.

§ 01 Who this is for

Who this is for

Officers who have been asked to get something built and are working out which process applies before they can start.

The question that comes up most often is not about us. It is whether a build and its hosting are one procurement requirement or two, and whether a small purchase can be repeated without becoming a split purchase.

Everything about how the build itself runs is in the main guide.What working with us looks like →

§ 02 The three sourcing tiers

The three sourcing tiers

Three tiers, set by the estimated procurement value of a single requirement. The process obligations rise with the band.

Fig. A — The three sourcing tiers

Thresholds and process descriptions as published by MOF and GeBIZ. Values are estimated procurement value for a single requirement.

Sourcing approach by estimated value

Small Value Purchase: Estimated value up to S$6,000. Buy off the shelf or from a known source, provided prices are assessed to be reasonable. Verbal or written quotes, or GeBIZ Mall catalogues. No GeBIZ notice, no award notice.
Quotation: Roughly S$6,000 to S$90,000. Published on GeBIZ. MOF states the two-official rule here: one officer invites, receives and evaluates offers, another approves.
Tender / Tender Lite: Above S$90,000. Published, evaluated and awarded through GeBIZ, with an award notice naming the supplier and the contract sum.

§ 03 How Small Value Purchase works

How Small Value Purchase works

MOF describes a Small Value Purchase as buying off the shelf or from a known source for a need estimated at or below S$6,000, provided prices are assessed to be reasonable. Sourcing is by verbal or written quote, off-the-shelf purchase, or GeBIZ Mall catalogue.

It is the simplest tier, and what it leaves out is as important as what it includes.

The only substantive compliance test MOF writes into the SVP description is price reasonableness — prices assessed as reasonable, reflecting fair market value.
SVP does not appear in the publication requirements, which cover Tender and Quotation notices. An SVP purchase is largely invisible to competitors.
MOF states the two-official rule for Quotations, not for SVP. Individual agencies frequently impose their own internal segregation and a three-informal-quotes habit as good practice.
SVP is repeatable per genuinely distinct requirement. An agency can run many separate SVPs in a year for different needs.

Read the source

The wording above follows MOF's procurement processes page and the GeBIZ regime page. Individual agencies publish their own internal rules on top of it, and those are frequently stricter than the published minimum.

§ 04 Repeatable, or splitting?

Repeatable, or splitting?

SVP is a per-requirement allowance, not an annual one. What it cannot absorb is a single known requirement cut into pieces.

Legitimately separate

Separate requirements arising at different times, from different departments or for different events — even with the same vendor.
Recurring small operational needs that arise organically over the year, each independently under the threshold.
A second purchase where the need genuinely was not known when the first was made.

Reads as splitting

One known requirement broken into several sub-threshold purchases. The Public Accounts Committee documented this across eleven ministries in 2013.
A total need of S$15,000 cut into three S$5,000 buys, whether to one vendor or several.
Anything structured or divided in order to avoid the obligations that would otherwise apply — the wording used in Singapore's FTA-derived procurement chapters.

How this gets caught

MOF responded to those audit findings by deploying a business intelligence tool to detect split-purchase patterns, and confirmed disciplinary action where officers do it deliberately. The test applied across comparable frameworks — US FAR, Philippines RA 12009, EU Directive 2014/24 — converges on the same question: was the total requirement known and single in nature at the time the structure was chosen?

§ 05 Build and hosting: one requirement or two?

Build and hosting: one requirement or two?

Our position is that a build and its hosting are two requirements, not one. A build is a one-time deliverable with a fixed scope and a known price. Hosting is a recurring operational service with an open-ended total, bought from a market an agency can and often does source separately. Treating them as a single requirement collapses two different decisions, taken at two different times, into one line on a file.

Why they are two requirements

Build and hosting are different economic activities: a one-time deliverable against a recurring operational service.
The supplier markets differ. Agencies routinely source hosting from cloud providers or approved infrastructure panels, separately from whoever wrote the software.
The pricing logic differs. A build has a known fixed scope; hosting is a recurring cost with an unknown multi-year total.
If the client can self-host, self-maintain and modify the code, hosting is a convenience rather than a dependency. A real alternative exists.

Questions that test it

Was hosting a foregone conclusion at the point the build was bought, agreed in the same breath as one package?
Could the agency actually self-host? If the deployment package and code are not genuinely usable without us, the alternative is theoretical.
Does the file show two dated decisions, or one decision written up as two?

Our position

Neither MOF nor GeBIZ publishes an explicit bundling test, so this is a reasoned position rather than a rule we can point at. It holds when the severability is real: hosting priced separately, optional in writing, elected after delivery, and a deployment package the agency can actually run without us. Where the build alone exceeds S$6,000 the question does not arise under Small Value Purchase at all, because the build already sits in the Quotation band. The officer with the file makes the call, and internal policy may be stricter than the published minimum.

§ 06 Evidence of severability

Evidence of severability

Whatever an agency concludes, the file is what survives. Four things make the reasoning legible to whoever reads it later.

Write the optionality down: Our proposals state that hosting is optional and that the client may self-host using the deployment package provided. That sentence is the evidence if the file is ever queried.
Price them separately: Build and hosting appear as separate line items with independent values, so a price schedule can carry one without the other.
Keep the timeline honest: Where hosting is decided after delivery, the dated request is itself evidence of two distinct needs rather than one divided one.
One Quotation is always available: An agency that wants both now can run a single Quotation covering the build plus optional hosting as separate priced line items. That avoids the question entirely and still keeps hosting severable.

§ 07 What we do and do not do

What we do and do not do

We deliver a working system in three weeks, go live in about three months, and hand over the code, so nothing here depends on staying with us.
We can supply written confirmation of severability, a deployment package, and a scope statement in the form your file needs.
We do not advise on procurement classification, we do not draft your justification, and we do not tell an officer which tier applies.
We have no partner scheme and pay no commission to anyone who introduces us.

Ownership and handover Fees and payment Request a call

§ 08 Sources

Sources

MOF — Government procurement processes →
Sourcing approaches and the value bands for Small Value Purchase, Quotation and Tender.
GeBIZ — Singapore government procurement regime →
Definition of a Small Value Purchase and the publication requirements that attach to each tier.
GeBIZ — Supplier guide (summarised) →
Sourcing channels: verbal or written quotes, off-the-shelf purchase, GeBIZ Mall catalogues.
Public Accounts Committee report (2013) →
Audit findings on purchases split to avoid rules for higher-value procurement, and MOF's response.
Government Procurement Regulations 2014 →
Defines a recurring contract as two or more contracts arising from a single requirement.

Note

Links point at the publishers, not at our summary of them. Where a description here differs from the source, the source is right.