Tag Archives: Public Sector
Francis Maude at PASC – select committee digs into UK government procurement
The UK parliament’s Public Administration Select Committee held the final hearing of their investigation into public sector procurement this week, and appropriately their witness was Francis Maude, the Minister with responsibility for the subject. As we’ve said many times, he is more interested in and knowledgeable about procurement than any other Minister we’ve had, and his hour or so on the topic was low key in style but quite illuminating. He got some good questioning from Bernard Jenkin, the Chair, but some of the other Committee members were poor in terms of their lack of any real insight or challenge. [...]
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From Hubris to High Court (almost) – The Story of Southwest One (Part 1)
(We are delighted to have finally persuaded Dave Orr to write for us, and as a Somerset citizen, he will be laying out the fascinating story of Southwest One over the next few weeks – a story that everyone involved in outsourcing should note with interest… and we’ll tell you a bit more about Dave himself next time). Apart from glorious countryside, hills and moors, rural Somerset is probably best known for a rustic blend of cider, cheese, cricket, the Wurzels and the Glastonbury Festival. Oh….we also split atoms and some whopping new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point are coming, [...]
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Crown Commercial Representatives – 99 Problems (well, 9 issues anyway)
So , what do we think about the UK government’s appointment of new Crown Commercial Representatives? Here are a few questions. Not 99 problems maybe, as Jay-Z would put it, but certainly 9 issues. 1. Is there still significant cost to be taken out of government contracts, or has the first wave of CCR activity generated most of the benefit already? 2. Are the major suppliers going to feel even more victimised by getting set upon by these “heavies”, and less likely to offer any innovation to the government – will they just put “UK Government” firmly in the “cash [...]
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The NHS Procurement Strategy – a nation (still) waits
So what’s happened to the UK’s National Health Service Procurement strategy? The story so far… (you might want to get a cup of coffee and settle down, this might be a long one). April 2012 At a conference in Manchester, the new NHS procurement strategy is going to be announced. Instead, the excellent Beth Loudon from Department of Health has to explain that top NHS management wanted more discussion with the market, and more “meat” in the strategy so there would be a delay whilst… May 2012 NHS appoints Sir Ian Carruthers to conduct a “call for evidence” to help [...]
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Crown Commercial Representatives – male, pale and … very successful businessmen
If you’re thinking that we haven’t exactly been hot off the press with reporting on the appointment of six more UK government “Crown Commercial Representatives”, you’d be right. that’s because I’ve been working out just what exactly I think about it… They’re joining Cabinet Office to help central government manage their largest suppliers, and negotiate further savings, particularly in IT related areas. We understand they are in the main taking over work from current government CPOs, who have been doing this CCR role in addition to their departmental day jobs for the last couple of years. The roles were widely [...]
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ConsultancyONE finally complete – list of successful suppliers on framework published
Hooray! As thousands of management consultants dance in the streets (see picture), the full list of successful suppliers who have gained places on the UK government’s ConsultancyONE framework has now been released. I was expecting some sort of formal announcement, but it just seems to have been slipped out quietly to the providers and with this list on the Gov.uk website. Perhaps the government doesn’t want to draw attention to what has been a somewhat troubled procurement, ultimately requiring 18 months from start to finish. There are 15 separate Lots, ranging through functional consulting, audit, finance and multi-disciplinary work, and [...]
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UK Government procurement – the anti-centralisation fightback starts!
After our Yes Minister homage earlier this week (here and here), covering the further centralisation of procurement in UK Government, it was interesting to see yesterday what might be the beginnings of a fight back by the departments against the increasingly ambitious and controlling Cabinet Office. Someone – or several someones – has obviously fed Sue Cameron at the Telegraph with some juicy titbits of anti-Cabinet Office information / propaganda (take your pick, depending with whom your sympathies lie). This is not surprising after the incredibly one-sided Times feature recently, that gave two pages over to what I can only [...]
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QinetiQ Commerce Decisions – CloudStore brings MOD sunshine!
The UK Government’s G-Cloud CloudStore seems to be reaching a critical mass and proving itself to be a success after a probably inevitably slow start. The new “G-Cloud III” list of suppliers goes live this week, but what is more impressive is that sales in March were £7M, compared to around £10M over the previous year or so since the initiative was first launched. And now with Francis Maude announcing a “cloud first” policy last week, that growth is likely to accelerate. All central government departments in the UK will now have to prioritise cloud services when buying IT. It’s [...]
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Yes Minister – Three Cheers for the Complex Transactions Group!
(Part 2 of our latest homage to the brilliant Yes Minster and Yes Prime Minister series, written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn. Part 1 is here). So Minister, you raised the new Cabinet Office Complex Transactions Group. This is the team who are going to help us with complex IT projects. I understand they were going to call themselves the “Big Deal” team until someone pointed out this sounded a little too much like a TV game show for comfort. - So are you against that idea, Humphrey? More interference from Cabinet Office. and this time it isn’t just [...]
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Yes Minister – Sir Humphrey raises his glass to centralised government Procurement
(Especially for the UK Bank Holiday – our latest homage to the brilliant Yes Minster and Yes Prime Minister series, written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn). - Humphrey, do come in. Thank you Minister. I’ve brought Colin with me. Colin is our Commercial Director. - Really? I have a Commercial Director? Yes, we used to call him Head of Purchasing but we thought Commercial sounded more… dynamic and twenty-first century somehow. - Well it’s nice to meet you Colin. Now, this is all about the new Cabinet Office plans for greater centralisation of procurement isn’t it? Francis Maude, master [...]
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NHS Supply Chain – committed spend drives better value
We talked about the general progress and issues around the NHS Supply Chain operation, run by DHL, in part 1 here. Today we’ll dig into a couple of more specific initiatives. One successful idea has been the “capital trading fund”. This idea, developed by the Department of Health and DHL, saw DH providing initial funding so that DHL could go to the market with commitment and actually buy outright health capital equipment – items that they knew their customers were going to need, but for which they didn’t necessarily have firm orders. The results demonstrated what we probably would have [...]
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David Atkinson on supplier management and tax avoidance
We’ve featured David Atkinson here before, our friend and ex Rolls-Royce procurement executive and now procurement adviser, thinker, and educator. He has that unusual combination of real CPO type experience along with a very enquiring mind and the desire to really think about procurement, and that blend informs his writing very successfully. * He’s just published a really excellent new article on his Four Pillars website – you can read it here. In it, he manages to go from the current debate in the UK around large firms using tax avoidance / evasion methods, to asymmetry in buyer / supplier [...]
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Why the MOD DE&S GoCo probably won’t happen
We featured the potential “GoCo” (government owned, contractor operated) solution for the Defence Equipment and Support organisation (DE&S) earlier this week after the UK government announced the next phase of the work towards this possible end for the Ministry of Defence’s procurement and logistics organization. “Throughout the next 12 months, MOD will continue to work with the Treasury and the Cabinet Office on the ‘DE&S+’ option to explore the extent of change that could be delivered whilst keeping the organisation fully within the boundaries of the public sector. In parallel, a commercial process will be launched today that will enable [...]
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A decision to delay the decision about MOD procurement as DE&S uncertainty continues
Last week, Philip Hammond, the UK’s Defence Minister, announced the next stage in the move towards turning the MOD’s Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) organisation into a “GoCo” – a government owned, contractor operated entity. This whole initiative has been dragging on now for years . Bernard Gray, the architect of the plan, joined MOD in January 2011 but wrote his report (the beginning of this whole debate) in 2009, so it has taken some time just to get to this point of announcing – well, announcing that no real decision will be made for another year (at least)! Whilst [...]
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Down the Procurement Pub – CIPS Surrey, a Times hagiography , and better UK GDP numbers
Thanks to everyone who came to the YMCA Guildford (all together now, “Y M C A – ay”) last night for my presentation to the CIPS Surrey Branch It was a beautiful evening, so I fully expected a dropout rate of around 90% but actually it wasn’t a bad turnout, with around 30 people turning up – thanks to all of them. We discussed deep issues around supplier management and supplier life cycle approaches to procurement, and less deep around horsemeat, green potatoes and dodgy management consultants! We’ll come back next week to some of the interesting discussion about the [...]
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Stephen Kelly interview – Cabinet Office COO on shared services (part 2)
Here’s part 2 of my interview with Stephen Kelly, COO at the Cabinet Office, covering the UK government’s plans for SSCs (shared service centres). So you’re just going to market now looking for a JV partner to run the second shared service centre (SSC 2), which was originally DWP’s I believe. How is the competition running – what is the basis for the contract and the selection process? Basically, we’re asking for bids whereby the supplier will acquire 75% of the equity, and will be awarded a fixed contract including pre-agreed terms and prices. So the contract isn’t negotiable, but [...]
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- Dark Procurement – ethics and moral dilemmas : Gordon Murray said: Excuse the poor English in the previous reply, that should have been: Can you just confirm... more
- Dark Procurement – ethics and moral dilemmas : Gordon Murray said: Hi, B&T, can you just confirm that you would pay an additional £1m for something the ... more
- From Hubris to High Court (almost) – The Story of Southwest One (Part 1) : James Garrett said: That the wheels came off Southwest One was never a surprise to those who followed its shak... more
- From Hubris to High Court (almost) – The Story of Southwest One (Part 1) : Prof Dexter Whitfield said: I find the idea that the Conservatives 'sabotaged' the contract as fanciful and plainly in... more
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