Streamlining procurement within Central and Civil Government

Last year saw the granting of additional powers to the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) allowing them to set out the procurement standards government departments needed to meet, to monitor departments' performance against these targets, and to require inter-departmental collaboration where needed.

However, the OGC themselves recognise that central government is made of up a complex array of organisations and therefore procurement direction and strategy needs to differ by department in order to meet the challenges of different environments they operate in. Notwithstanding these differences, procurement transformation remains a central focus of the OGC’s agenda.

Procurement's role in ensuring good public services

Nigel Smith, the OGC’s chief executive stated that “Good procurement is essential to ensuring good public services, from buying goods that works as they are supposed to, to achieving savings that can be ploughed back into front-line service. Having clear and detailed data on current departmental capability is an important step in the process of transforming government procurement”.

The OGC are currently setting out what departments will need to do to meet the objectives of their ‘Transforming Government Procurement’ agenda. One of the key streams is their directive to government departments to ensure that procurement spend is channeled through collaborative deals. Spikes Cavell’s data management and Observatory solutions have already been helping a number of government departments identify key areas for spending efficiency improvements as well as helping to inform procurement strategy and identify suitable spend categories to consider for collaborative deals.

To find out how Spikes Cavell can help your government department meet its procurement transformation objectives contact us for more information.