Public Sector Organisations in Changing Approach to Delivering Services Online
Dec 1, 2017
GOSS, web and digital platform company, has produced its third Public Sector Digital Self-Service Survey covering 2017-18. It is one of the UK’s largest surveys of its kind. The 200-plus individuals (of CEOs, IT managers, procurers and purchasers) from 179 Public Sector organisations contributing...
Clean Contracting Manifesto Launched by Transparency International
Dec 1, 2017
Transparency International, together with CoST (the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative), Open Contracting Partnership (OCP), Hivos and Article19, have launched the Clean Contracting Manifesto. “The whole lifecycle of public procurement must be implemented to the highest possible...
Social Value Act Should Be Extended To Cover More Spend
Dec 1, 2017
A new report ‘Our Money Our Future’ by former MP and author of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, Chris White, and Social Enterprise UK, claims the UK Government should extend the Social Value Act to include more public spending. Currently the Act ‘shapes’ around £25bn of public...
Unlocking Public Value – Will New Report Change Anything?
Nov 30, 2017
What should be an important report for government was issued this month in the UK. We say “should be” because the initial reaction to it was muted, to say the least – but more on that later.
The report (which we mentioned here briefly) comes from Sir Michael Barber, a distinguished academic,...
Government Needs ‘Public Value Framework To Improve Efficiency’
Nov 24, 2017
A report was published on November 17 by HM Treasury; the Public Value Review calls for a sharper results culture in public services. It looks into how central government can ensure it is delivering maximum value for money in public services such as hospitals, schools and other essential services....
Have Your Say – Consultation on Guidance of EU Public Procurement
Nov 17, 2017
The European Commission invites your views on a draft Guidance on Public Procurement of Innovation. The Guidance on Public Procurement of Innovation supports the wider uptake of public procurement of innovation in the EU and the document will cover added value of public procurement of innovation;...
An Important New Guide to Agile
Nov 13, 2017
Think about it for a bit, and it should become clear why a waterfall style of software development—where one develops requirements and a work plan in advance, and only then sets the contractor about the job of producing the system—became so entrenched in government for so long.
This approach...
NHS Hospitals To Be Ranked On How Much They Spend on Goods and Services
Nov 10, 2017
UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt announced this week that NHS hospitals throughout the country will be ranked in a ‘Procurement League Table’ according to how much they are spending on goods and services. With ongoing wide variation in the amount hospitals are charged, and pay, for everyday...
InnProBio Launches Online Toolbox for Buyers
Nov 10, 2017
The InnProBio European project has launched an online toolbox for bio-based procurement in the public sector. The toolbox is a starting point for public buyers to learn about the various bio-based products available on the market when considering alternatives to plastics produced from fossil-based...
Smaller Cities Are Getting Smarter About How They Buy Things
Nov 8, 2017
Performance-based contracting and electronic purchasing platforms have been a best practice in big cities for years. Now some mid-sized municipalities are adopting these approaches but implementing shifts isn’t easy. Generally, smaller cities have been slow to fully embrace e-procurement and...
NAO on Commercial & Contract Management – “Work Towards Business-As-Usual Requirements”
Nov 8, 2017
At the end of last year, the UK’s National Audit Office issued a very useful document titled “Commercial and contract management: insights and emerging best practice”. We did provide an initial overview of it here, and now we are into a more detailed review of its content and findings. For...
Highways England New Procurement Approach
Nov 2, 2017
Chief Executive of Highways England, Jim O’Sullivan, has revealed the highways body is looking at new ways to award work based on contractor performance as part of its new procurement model. We read in New Civil Engineer that contractors could be judged by the client on how well a scheme is...
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Policies and Regulations
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Perspectives and Insights
I have been interested in the question of getting successful commercial companies, especially tech companies, to sell to the government from the time I was …
The Contractor Accountability and Transparency Act of 2017 (S. 651), introduced by Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Jon Tester, D-Mont., is yet another example of a …
Think you know all about public sector owned professional buying organisations (PBOs) and what they do? Here are ten interesting facts that might just surprise …