Delivering on reform
Chief Procurement Officer Paul Quinn explains how reform is improving how the system operates.
The changes to how government undertakes its procurement are continuing under the Government reform programme, led by Minister Brendan Howlin TD. The Taoiseach has appointed Minister Simon Harris TD, with special responsibility for public procurement. The procurement structures are moving to a more centralised approach, not only with the creation of the Office of Government Procurement, but also with new centralised structures in health, education, local government and defence.
The Procurement Executive, which I chair as CPO, is tasked with enabling collaboration and co-ordination across these delivery partner sourcing organisations. To support these changes, the Government is also investing in systems to better support procurement and in learning and development to improve staff capability. The principle of the operating model is that the Public Service will address the market with ‘one voice’. For example, that voice for common goods and services will be in the Office of Government Procurement (OGP). However, it will be in Health Business Services for health-specific spend areas, and in local government for spends specific to it.
2014 has been a year of building capacity in the OGP, gathering spend data and developing its detailed plans for 2015. The OGP is coming to the end of its recruitment cycle and has attracted talented and experienced people from across the public service and from private industry. The new teams in the OGP are gearing up to address its customer buying needs for 2015 but also to take a whole-of-government view of the spend in areas such as ICT, facilities management, professional services, marketing and utilities. The OGP’s key account managers are working with their clients to identify their pipeline of sourcing work and to ensure that their customer’s needs from each sector are captured. The category councils are the mechanism to oversee the development and implementation of pan-government sourcing strategies for each type of spend and these groups are gaining traction.
The drivers of the procurement reform is not only to deliver sustainable savings and value-for-money for the tax-payer, but also to reduce commercial and implementation risk, improve supplier performance, provide accurate and timely information to the Oireachtas and the public, and to develop deeper procurement expertise in key areas of spend. These drivers and benefits of the programme are equally valid in times of recession and recovery.
The OGP is continuing to build its systems capabilities and has recently launched an interim customer relationship management system. There has also been a number of changes to the national electronic tendering platform (eTenders) to improve registration for suppliers and also data capture. The OGP is also tendering for a strategic business intelligence system to improve reporting across government spend. It continues to gather spend information from Public Service bodies to enable it report to the Oireachtas but also to inform procurement strategy. Data is the oil of the procurement machine.
The OGP is very conscious of its buying power but also the need to ensure that the markets it buys from remain competitive. The team works with other government bodies, such as the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Enterprise Ireland and InterTrade Ireland and industry bodies such as Isme, Ibec, the Small Firms Association, and the Construction Industry Federation to address barriers for business to public procurement. Changes have been made to public procurement rules to enable small firms to compete for government contracts. At the recent ‘meet the buyer’ events in Belfast and Dublin, organised by InterTrade Ireland, the OGP and the other sector sourcing organisations met with over 1,500 businesses to help them better understand public procurement and the relevance of their goods and services to government.
The new Procurement Directives which will be transposed into Irish law in 2015 are aimed at simplifying procurement rules and integrating social, environmental and labour considerations into procurement. A public consultation is under way at the time of writing this. Significant changes are also under way in the government public works area with changes scheduled for implementation early in the new year.
2015 will be an exciting and challenging year for the OGP, but also a critical one. It will be its first full year of operating at scale and delivering substantial benefits to the State. The challenges in implementing a pan-government change programme such as procurement reform are not for the faint-hearted. The new structures will impact how all public bodies spend tax-payer money and some managers and suppliers simply don’t like those changes. The OGP has been very lucky in attracting a great management team of talented and robust people who will strongly challenge the status quo and look for innovative ways to deliver better value for money.
I have no doubt that as the new procurement structures deliver results in 2015, the dividend from reform will quickly become evident.
