Procurement's digital future

By Paul Snell

This week the government published its Digital Britain report into the future of how the UK will make the most of technology in the future.

The report (which can be downloaded here) contains a few interesting suggestions for purchasers.

The government is going to establish a Network Design and Procurement Group to oversee the spending of £200 million to establish the UK's super-fast broadband network. A CEO of the group will be appointed in the Autumn. Perhaps this is an opportunity for a current CPO to use their buying experience to make the step up ?

It also mentioned the need for a step-change in the way the public sector buys IT, which is being enhanced by greater skills training. In future when a supplier wins a government contract they will be compelled to provide a formal training plan for the staff on that project.

There was also the recommendation that all major public sector IT procurements should be signed-off by the government’s chief information officer.

This should be a big disappointment for the procurement profession. Why should it be the decision of the CIO, who is essentially the internal customer in the project? This should be the role of the government’s chief buyer (and another glaring example of the problems caused because the government does not have an overall CPO, as it does for IT). At the very least it should be the role of the head of the OGC, who is meant to represent the government's buyers.

Comments

[bitter and twisted]

Im not disappointed at all.

Purchasers

work

for

the

customer

[Cristian Martin]

Perhaps this is more of a debate over whether we need a CPO? Procurement specialists and Purchasers are two different beasts, bitter and twisted is right that purchasers work for the customer having no input on what is bought and why, whereas the procurement specialist asks the questions of if it is needed (demand management), new or second-hand, buy or lease decisions etc whilst incorporating the strategies from other divisions that the customer might not be aware of... - It doesn't help that those in the profession aren't confident in this method of distinction, so how can we expect HR or Finance to be?

I think we do need a CPO for the government wallet, not to make the final decision, but to be co-ordinator of all government departments spend, influencing for the better, the head of the OGC would make the most sense. I think the first step is to make use of OGC contracts mandatory in the public sector, but change the commission model of the OGC to a properly funded department, thus not tampering with the cost of contracts they offer and in a lot of cases making them less cost effective than they should be (the larger contracts remunerating OGC to subsidise the smaller ones).

[Ayande A.B Prosper]

I think the recommendations on the report is in the right direction. Early customer involvement is a basic principle of procurement, more so,procurement exist to satisfy the internal and external customer and only the customer can tell what quality is thus "fitness for the purpose" with guidance from procurement.

In every project we have the Project Owner and in this case the project owner is the CIO hence task with the responsibility of signing off IT projects.