Governance
Bringing public sector procurement to the fore |
|
|
| Governance | |
| Written by Richard Mullins, public sector specialist, Wax Digital | |
| Friday, 06 August 2010 | |
|
My vision would be that procurement should be seen as a saviour against the cuts.
Recently I participated in a public sector procurement leaders debate. I heard sentiments of keenness and frustration from purchasing experts wanting to play their part in deficit repair. Assuming these people’s views are indicative of their peers’, procurement needs a seat at the top table in order to consult the public sector on how to affect strategic change in the way spending is managed and controlled. Barbara Cairney, head of procurement, Northamptonshire Police concurred: “It is a shame that it has taken the current financial situation to bring procurement to the fore, but there is an opportunity to shape the future of the public sector and bring more of our commercial knowledge into play.” Lack of education and understanding about the role and potential of procurement people in the sector compared to in commercial worlds was flagged as a key issue. Jane Turl, an interim head of procurement who has served at various London Boroughs and central government departments said: “There’s a distinct lack of understanding of what procurement means within the organisation... “They [the board] start to see it as a panacea and they want instant results... Education should start further back and higher up. We don’t have a seat at the table until the situation becomes so desperate that they can’t think of anyone else to ask.” Lack of time for strategy is also often manifested in excessively detailed and non-automated processes for small scale purchasing. The recent MoD £6bn inventory issue suggests that such issues are widespread. But Glenn Fletcher, director of EC services, Achilles confirmed that procurement must actively seek to change its approach too: “Procurement needs more time to concentrate on the strategic decisions rather than dealing with the downstream issues. If we want to go and sit on the top table we have to go and improve that.” Knocking on the boardroom door is the starting point, according to Glenn Gooch, associate director of procurement, NHS South West Essex, whose commercial sector background brought an awareness of the need to ‘sell’ ones services internally. “Procurement needs board level support, if you try and do a bottom up approach it will never work in a million years. You need a mandate from the board,” said Gooch. So why should the board listen? For Jonathan Jones, programme manager, West Midlands Improvement & Efficiency Partnership, it’s about actually preserving public services. “If procurement is done really well it can save services, by really pulling together the very best way to deliver these things... My vision would be that procurement should be seen as a saviour against the cuts because if it’s done well it can really take out a lot of cost and protect those front line services.” In the last four or five years there has certainly been a great willingness to embrace changes in procurement but it seems there hasn’t always been the backing. My wish is that now the people with the vision and ideas are now going to get the support to enable them to deliver it. As Jones concluded: “We’ve really got to get to grips with strategic understanding, coordinating, more than just lip service approach. There’s really got to be that core buy in to deliver this well and to drive savings.”
|
|
Digg it! 
del.icio.us 
Newsvine 
Reddit 
Stumble It! 
