Breakfast Briefing: Office of Government Commerce

51 delegates from across WIG’s membership attended a breakfast briefing with Sally Collier, Executive Director of OGC. Sally outlined how OGC was structured and the various major initiatives underway to improve the way purchasing across government was conducted. She stressed that value for money objectives had to be aligned with policy goals, for example, in regard to diversity and sustainability.

Sally then went on to talk about the following important aspects of OGC’s work:

• Collaborative Procurement: A £70billion market covering a wide range of common goods and services – energy, fleet, office supplies, and IT and professional services. The emphasis was on aggregating government demand for these, not supply.
• Major Projects: Included large value contracts and those of strategic importance (e.g. Olympics). Here they were putting in place a framework for common understanding and reporting, plus an assurance mechanism regarding project progress. This included an intervention strategy if not everything was going OK.
• Development of relevant policy, skills and capability: The Procurement Capability Reviews are looking at the effectiveness of departments’ procurement in the widest sense. The teams are joint public and private sector, chaired by OGC and are designed to lead to action to improve. Sally went on to talk about the need to revitalise procurement as a professional skill which would include looking at remuneration issues and talent management. Public Procurement policy, Sally stated, is set in Europe. Given that the last round of policy took 10 years to negotiate, it is very difficult to change anything so the UK must work flexibly within the framework.
• Sustainable Procurement: In November 2007 the OGC, along with Defra and other experts, set up Sustainable Procurement Centre of Excellence. The Centre is currently trying to get to grips with the targets and areas of difficulty.
• Involvement of SMEs in government procurement: A study on SMEs was underway directed by Anne Glover which is looking at the feasibility of aspirational targets for amounts of business from SMEs.

There followed a lively Q&A session in which Sally Collier spoke openly and candidly to delegates. One such issue was the aggregation of demand in IT and the promotion of standards and benchmarks. Sally responded that there is a lot of work going on to reduce the complexity of the guidance. A further question was asked about why government contracts were rushed into without first defining the requirements and that perhaps there was a need for commercial input upfront.

WIG is grateful to BP for hosting this event.