Public sector and change management

Rawlings is one of four speakers brought together by financial management automation supplier Basware, at a London roundtable exclusively attended to by PublicTechnology.net. His view is agreed upon by the software company’s public sector business development manager, Paul Sandford, who says, “It’s an obvious place to start in terms of collaboration without affecting the culture of the organisation too much, yet reduce costs.”

 

Cultural differences 

The notion of cultural differences within the public sector and how it's an obstacle in the way of organisations looking to implement significant changes, like shared services and shifting attitudes to professional procurement, is put squarely on the agenda.

 

“Change management is key,” explains Andrew Filer, director of ePro-Cure with experience of working on procurement processes at several public sector organisations including the Home Office and Welsh Assembly Government. “You’ve got to look at the big picture. Rather than do knee-jerk decisions, you’ve got to look at what’s needed. What we’ve seen so far is there have been a lot knee-jerk political drivers and not what the country actually needs.”

 

Rawlings adds part of the problem is the ‘old school’ attitude towards procurement within the UK’s public sector. “Procurement within the sector looks to edify itself like a second world country, and is fifteen years behind with its thinking,” he says. Such attitudes mean even today the process relies on the ‘power of the relationship’, which allows organisations to have the demand and budget to “beat up suppliers to get a better price”.

 

He continues, “It’s only in the last three to five years that we’re actually seeing the genuine adoption of more professional thinking of procurement as procurement, and not as buying.”

 

Looking around the table, it’s clear many believe the current economic crisis and budget squeeze offers the public sector to become the efficient machine it perhaps should be. Sandra Busby, managing director of the Welsh contact Centre Forum, said the implementation of efficiencies “should have been done years ago”, and stresses realises such goals only comes down to how change management strategies are implemented in order to “wake people up to understand what they need to do now.”

 

In a lively discussion, Filer explains a wide range of organisations and central government departments are really cutting edge. He says many are “really cutting edge and want to adopt new thinking, change, and new technology” before giving a perhaps unexpected example of one such cutting edge organisation. “The NHS is very good; the people there are trying to be leading edge, but they get shot for it because they try new things and it goes wrong – and they get bad press.”

 

In need of a champion 

Filer goes on to argue the cultural issue and the lack of a champion to direct departments looking to join up, is significant. “People want their own kudos, they want to be the king – and that’s where you’re getting the issue. I think the difference we’ve got now is people have to change.” 

 

Busby says such direction should come from Whitehall, together with “good examples from central government.”

 

Rawlings agrees about the need for leadership if a cultural shift in attitude to shared services and procurement is to be successfully realised in the public sector, and describes how an attempt to join up criminal justice ICT failed despite the work of “really good people doing some really good things”.

 

“The issue was because nobody could tell everyone to do it. They had the luxury of funding to say no. To follow Andrew’s point, the luxury of funding is not going to be there [from here on] to allow people to be different.”

 

The former Home Office commercial director describes to the table one incident from his 25 year experience of working with procurement in both the private and public sectors, which highlights one cultural attitude to procurement.

 

“At a hospital I was working at I had a surgeon who refused to use the agreed framework catalogue for operating theatre equipment. He answered they only did blue gloves and he wanted purple gloves. I asked whether it was really such an issue, and he said replied ‘If I’m operating on your mother’s brain, do you really want me to be unhappy about the colour of the gloves I’m using?’”

 

Rawlings later says a maturity curve has to be travelled in order to culturally see the benefits of shared services, but after hearing the story about the surgeon arguably such a curve might have to be travelled by the public sector procurement too.