procurement

SME inclusion milestone reached - and not a good one!
16/04/12

A less than impressive benchmark's been hit: the 200th 'Mystery Shopper' complaint from an SME about procurement practices that prevent smaller firms from pitching for government business.

On 11 February 2011, Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude announced a package of measures to open up the way that Government does business and to make sure that small companies, charities and voluntary organisations are in the best possible position to compete for billions of pounds worth of contracts.

Best Practice: 6 tips for change management in procurement
16/04/12
Moving to a procurement outsourcing model brings with it change management demands for any organisation. Procurement specialist GeProcure has come up a useful 6 stage process to help make the transition. 
 
Understand
 
Stage 1 - Assess: The whole change management initiative begins by understanding the current procurement practices within the organisation.
Chris Chant and the unacceptable aspects of public sector ICT
12/04/12

Last year G-Cloud programme director Chris Chant caused something of a stir when he made a speech outlining what he saw as the unacceptable aspects of public sector ICT.

As he prepares to step down from the G-Cloud office at the end of this month, he's updated his views in a blog posting on the G-Cloud site. As before, it's difficult to disagree with any of his conclusions. Chant states: 

Best Practice: Four considerations for CIOs when planning for the Cloud
03/04/12

Cloud uptake is on the rise – indeed, deployments are set to double by 2015 , and up to 200,000 UK jobs will be created by Cloud Computing technologies between 2011 and 2015. CIOs therefore have to accept that Cloud is here, and here to stay. So what considerations must a CIO make when moving to the Cloud, even if he or she is entirely unwilling to do so?! 

Cabinet Office lays out specifics on the way it wants ICT bought
30/03/12
The Cabinet Office has just released some practical tips to any Whitehall Department spending under £100m on ICT contracts on how to get more SMEs as suppliers.
 
In many ways it is just codifying a lot of what we have been hearing about the past few weeks, about government being a more intelligent customer, that new ways of working with industry have to be found, and more economical ways of delivering ICT need to be encou
Viewpoint: No benchmarking = no proper government procurement
30/03/12
Al Nagar of supplier Mercato thinks government IT procurement can’t really be reformed until we have more scope for proper benchmarking
 
Securing IT products for a fair price is a constant challenge for buyers, especially in a highly volatile market where price and stock change daily. How do you obtain and manage comparative data on ICT product costs?
 
Heres' the problem.
CloudStore 2 - sneak peek at what might change
30/03/12

 

Oracle signs new deal with government to save £75 million - UPDATED
28/03/12
The Cabinet Office and Oracle have signed a new deal that will deliver in excess of £75m in savings by 2015, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude has announced. 
 
Oracle is one of the government’s largest IT suppliers and works with almost every department and agency across Government.
 
The key aspects of the deal:
  • A single discount In the past, different parts of government have brought software from Oracle on different terms and at different discounts.
Video: Cabinet Office SME champion talking to business owners
23/03/12

Speaking at the Federation of Small Business conference in Scarborough this week Stephen Allott, Crown Representative for SMEs in the Cabinet Office, talks about the changes in procurement in the public sector and how to win central government contracts. (Is that Selina Scott doing the intro, by the way?) 

 

Viewpoint: Government is a long way from being an intelligent customer
16/03/12
David Chassels of UK tech SME Procession on UK HMG becoming an “intelligent customer” really is important
 
Last year the one of the recommendations made by Public Accounts Select Committee following its review of ICT use in Whitehall was that it needed to become the “intelligent customer”.

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