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Collaborative procurement

By OGCbuying.solutions

Truly collaborative procurement is now demanded by the Government. One of the key elements of the Government's vision as outlined in the Transforming Government Procurement report, is: ‘making use of the Government's collective buying power and market engagement in collaborative procurement’.

Buying Solutions is working closely with OGC, other Government departments, local authorities and others in support of this pan-government collaborative approach to procurement.

It is simply not efficient for departments to be awarding their own contracts and agreements, when aggregating such demand across the public sector would generate far greater savings in price, process and resource-savings which could then be recycled back into vital front line services - health, emergency services, education, for example.

In future, Government will choose to buy goods and services on a large scale through whichever single organisation, or collaborating organisations, are seen to be the most skilled, competent and trusted.

A Procurement Council now sets the strategic direction for all public sector procurement, while a Strategic Stakeholder Forum is accountable for strategic programme management.

A Commodities Steering Group is responsible for the overall delivery of the programmes while Collaborative Category Boards provide the means of getting the major spenders in each category together, identifying the opportunities and agreeing the most advantageous way forward.

So far 17 master categories and 92 sub categories have been identified. In recent months Buying Solutions has been closely involved in pilot projects to test the model in Energy, Travel and Office Solutions.

One vital objective has been to improve the quality of management information about public sector spend to inform the process of collaboration. This is now steadily improving. Supplier MI has played a great part in this process of data acquisition.

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