Busting bureaucracy and procuring with purpose
By Dominic Campbell • Jun 9th, 2008 • Category: FeaturesIn the blur that was last week, one tweet stood out and woke me from my ambient daze. Possibly after a night of broken sleep brought about by nightmarish images of Dale Winton loading up trolley loads of computers for government supermarket sweep style (or not), Tom Watson (our man in Parliament as Minister for Transformational Government and keen blogger and member of the Twitterati) appeared to start Thursday with a cheery determination to tackle the area of IT procurement in government.
Having endured the torture that is the government procurement process on numerous occasions, both from the client and supplier sides, Tom’s tweet grabbed my attention providing an opportunity to bring some like minded people together to try and influence government policy even if just in some small way. And with Tom seeming up for the fight and keen to get the input, why not?
The main problems as I see them:
- Without wanting to state the obvious, suffice to say anyone who comes into government procurement rules will be all to aware of the long drawn out procurement processes weighed down by red tape and requirements. Enough said.
- There is a clear need for a more outcome focused approach to procurement, one that is faster, more flexible and continually refers back to the business case, ensuring the need identified at the outset satisfies customer demand and is continually adjusted during procurement to ensure it remains relevant throughout what can often be a long and drawn out affair. This will require a way of drawing in more dynamic and entrepreneurial procurement professionals into the sector able to work closely with service delivery experts to ensure their views and the views of the customers/citizen are well represented throughout.
- Many view the procurement process as an end in itself rather than a means to an end, with the outcomes for customers and the organisation often lost in a haze of forms and closed language accessible only to the procurement experts, who they themselves often appear lost under piles of ever changing legislation, ITTs, OJEUs and Ts & Cs (to name just those that I have cared to learn!).
- Too often the market is prevented from helping to steer the process, held back from feeding in their knowledge and expertise as experts in their field by rigid processes, often viewed (sometimes rightly) with suspicion but whose creativity is restricted only by the limits of government officials’ imagination. While there have been some moves to open up the procurement process to allow for suppliers to propose more appropriate solutions, this has often merely led to far longer and more costly procurement processes as officials are forced out of their comfort zones supported by fewer clear guidelines and forms.
- In this way, risk is rarely (if ever) taken (or rewarded even!), opting rather to squeeze the life out of the precious few enterprising public servants who try to innovate and push the boundaries of service delivery using procurement in creative ways to seek best market solutions.
- The current system is not built to cope with new, non-standard, non-out of the box, innovative solutions. Therefore, ironically, this seeming lack of risk taking results in the government continually being prevented from breaking out of the box, tied in to proprietary and closed systems that themselves steer processes and ways of working within government, rather than providing the flexiblility to meet the needs of government and the society it exists to serve.
Some thoughts on what we could do to make a change:
- At a strategic level, there is a need to put in place a more flexible, transparent, entrepreneurial approach to procurement, perhaps learning from the recent shift in HR thinking from Human Resource Management to Talent Management. This will inevitably require having greater faith in individuals responsible for the procurement process and the creation of a new kind of risk management framework, one that is no less able to provide assurance that nothing untoward is happening but that also allows for more human, conversational and realistic relationships between suppliers and government and relies on the skill and judgement of the more enterprising procurement professional.
- Continue work to bring suppliers and government into closer contact with one another to developed a shared understanding, approach and culture to enable both to better understand each other’s needs (public value vs reasonable profit) to improve and foreshorten processes wherever possible.
- To kick this off, it is vital that the government seek the views of the business community regarding what the issues are that they face, with suppliers sure to be only too happen to provide examples of challenging situations they have faced in contracting with government. This could perhaps be supported through building a business case for change based on an estimation of the cost burden placed on UK industry by government procurement processes as they currently stand.
- There appears to be a current shortage in highly skilled and creative procurement professionals in government. It is vital that the government invests in developing the hard skills of experts and non-experts alike, but also encourage softer development opportunities such as on the job frontline experience for procurement experts to allow them to experience the realities of the outcomes procurement processes are intended to improve. The value of the rigid government procurement qualification may also be worth investigation, a qualification that appears to encourage a culture and bureaucratic structure that creates as much waste and inefficiency as it purports to save. Much like PRINCE 2 it seems to be one of those qualifications you need to get for your CV then get back to working in the real world (and yes I am PRINCE 2 qualified!). Why not actually make it reflect the organisational reality we live in - or better yet the reality we want to live in.
- Make the procurement process more accessible, above all by making the language of procurement less impenetrable. Government officers and suppliers alike might be able to make a better fist of achieving better outcomes through effective procurement if only they could understand what is expected of them in the first place.
- Accept the procurement hacks/work arounds and mainstream them. Many exist for a reason! Find the pockets of resistance to the procurement orthodoxy and capture what they are doing to make procurement work for them (faster, easier, whatever). Chances are we can learn from them. For instance, why not find a way of formally permitting government and its departments to take advantage of ‘one time only special offers’, allowing for guilt free opportunism rather than the under the counter way this takes place currently.
- In terms of encouraging smarter government procurement, it might be useful to consider a ‘national procurement pipleline/contract register’ to enable government to spot opportunities for economies of scale when going out to market. Why should each government silo foot a sizeable procurement bill each time it wants to buy a new enterprise system? Government must get smart and stop these inefficiencies within the procurement process itself.
Q. What are your views? Do you agree? What is missing? Do you have experiences you are willing to share?
With Tom listening and clearly up for ‘pushing the system’, I am keen to gather the views of as many people as possible from government and supply side to build a strong case for change.
Dominic Campbell is
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Phew, great thinking Dom. I’m not an expert on procurement (I play emu when the word is mentioned) but your point about mainstreaming the hacks is a very pertinent one - particularly in relation to the kind of stuff we are talking about. There are some hacks that seem to make it easy to contract individuals, so i guess there must be a way of extending that to small companies.
I think there is often an impression that Government procurement favours safe and proven IT contractors and solutions, in its evaluation processes. Often there is a feeling that new and innovative solutions to problems are not going to be sufficiently evaluated, because they diverge from the prevailing orthodoxy and risk averse nature of some Government departments. There is often a view that the biggest contractors and solutions always know best (e.g. the idea that no-one ever got fired for selecting Microsoft/IBM, or Windows etc.), and their ideas and status are given more weight over new companies and products. The prevailing orthodoxy seems to be that of conservatism, whether warrented or not.
An idea on how to to overcome this might be for CIOs in Goverment to blog more, or be more vocal in seeking innovative solutions to current and future issues. If Departments had more of a public display of their thinking - and this is known to suppliers - it might change what solutions are proposed and how they communicate these. The use of RFPs as a response to Government procumement should be enhanced with real-time discussion and collaboration. RFPs should be smarter and involve more collaboration with Government and suppliers. Marshall McLuhan said ‘We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us’. If blogs etc. are used more to solicit views from suppliers - in respect of RFPs etc., it will change the dynamic of how suppliers interact with Government, and how they propose and collaborate together.
There is a risk in not taking risks, and accepting solutions that are tried and tested, but are not necessarily agile or flexible to meet the future needs of society or the changing business zeitgeist. The business world is changing into a much more interconnected network of suppliers and partners, in which the line between internal and external is blurred. This dynamic of a highly distributed network of entities making up an organisation will become more and more prevalent, and is already evidenced in many governmnet departments. Adapting to such an environment requires significant riss taking to entend trust for major decisions and procurement to different entities.
Given this, I’m not sure there should be “greater faith in individuals responsible for the procurement process”, but rather there should be more entities involved in analysing procurement decisions and solutions. While I’m not calling for some kind of collective decision making that would diffuse responsibility, I’m suggesting there should be more opportunity for internal consultation on large IT projects. This includes consultation from other CIOs within Government as to their experiences and views.
I think also seeking the views of the business community is an excellent idea. There should be a forum where they could express their analysis of the the current procurement framework and suggest improvements. Such a forum should also be available within government so interested stakeholders could share and discuss their experiences of IT procurement and how it should be changed e.g. give reviews of contractors and solutions (something like http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk).
There should be no such thing as procurement. If there is a word to describe the activity, then let’s call it commissioning. Sourcing and thinking sensibly are much the most important aspects of this process that can take ten years.
Troubles - it is designed by an EU bureaucracy that cannot adjust, and never will adjust, at the speed of the market. The buyer i.e. the public sector is therefore always at a disadvantage. All the OJEUs in the world won’t correct the deficit in the design.
If I was the British government I would advertise in OJEU - ” All businesses and individuals wishing to do business with the UK government are presumed to be capable of so doing, and by being registered at Companies House, or paying income or corporation tax, we will do business with you ”
Then having got the charade out of the way that procurement is about choosing the best solution, prepare the business world and the buying community for obtaining the best outcomes. This might mean testing smaller, iterative and quick to evaluate pilots ; using SMEs rather than patronising them ; sharing risk and reward ; speaking with the people who built the High Speed Rail Link because it worked and sharing best practice or good practice
All the sticking plasters such as OGC, ” Better Procurement “, more professional procurement etc..Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply are simply that - sticking plasters on a process that does not work. I would bet my bottom dollar that government procurement is worse now that thre are so many CIPS people than when there were none. Not because CIPS is a complete waste of time, but because the people on the private sector side are in business to make money, and most of the time the CIPS people on the buying side find that money grows on trees because the Treasury gives it to them.
How may more Chinook helicopters, Holyrood Parliaments, Metronets, and all the rest does it take for politicians to realise that they are 5-0 down after 80 minutes in any procurement process ?
Can they level the playing field ? Maybe - there is a new chief executive at OGC who has some experience of the private sector. They will need some brave Ministers hence I applaud the sentiment from Mr Watson. However the National Health IT record and the Identity and Pasport Services record make me very sceptical that deep down anything will change.
If Mr Watson would like to convene SME and other participants to talk about transformational government and avoiding the evils of procurement, then please let him do so. Look forward to it.
Alex
Quotes from another discussion on-line
” Now then, This might make you cross, but I’ve been at the ‘welfare to work’ conference for the last two days (that bit won’t bother or interest you at all). I’ve been in the industry many years, and it was very interesting calmly sitting this year ‘joining the dots’ with regards to those who had secured large (very large) public contracts for their organisations, and their links to Ministers/ the partners thereof, mates with senior Civil servants etc. (I’m old enough to be able to quietly say to myself, now isn’t she married to…., or didn’t he use to work with….)
Now, I’m not necessarily saying that is a bad thing - (because I fully admit I have benefitted from that too!), and one does not wish to let a client down if you know and like them, which is a powerful quality assurance tool. But then should we be honest with everyone about who can get work?
So moving to the question posed, why on earth would one advertise Government jobs online, when in fact it would be entirely reasonable to expect someone found through personal recommendation to get the job….
I feel a telling-off is in the ether…”
A reply
” I contract with government, and have done for a while now. I am not a part of a large consultancy, yes they pitch for the work I do, but if I am better than them - I get the job.
I have no idea about mates getting jobs, the rules are scarily rigorous in this regard. It is nigh on impossible to slip a mate in as it were.
However, the measures that government goes to to prevent such matey behaviour, does mean that all contractors/consultants must go through a framework agreement. these government framework agreements are few and far between and to get on them you have to have quite a substantial business, so to apply for a job, you need to register with said framework agency and then apply. Of course, if once you get called to interview your face is familiar, the interview goes more smoothly, but trust me - it is never a given. (I have learned this time and time again).
My beef with the framework thing is that intermediaries, agencies/consultancies etc, once on the framework - get all of the work! Or contract out the work at presumably a nice profit. This cuts out the small fry, like me, contracting directly (and without ‘fees’).
So, although these frameworks safeguard itself against nepotism and the like, they also create an unfair system of contracting with government that cuts out the smaller, perhaps more VFM companies. (It takes a lot of investment for a company to go through the rigorous application process to get on a framework agreement, and they offset the cost against potential profit in the promised contracts - which do not always materialise to be frank).
So I agree with a point that you were inadvertantly making, but I disagree with the nepotism bit. It is very, very hard to ‘get a mate in’ in government. (Just ask my mates :)) “
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