The Budget was dramatic in many ways but had little of specific procurement interest – unless you are a public sector procurer with a frozen salary….sorry! But it laid out the scope of the savings that will be needed in the ‘non-protected’ Departments, and I assume those constraints will find their way out into local authorities, schools, police forces as well as central Departments. A 25% real cut is significant, and as we’ve said before, it is imperative that third party savings make up as large a proportion of that as possible; otherwise it is more jobs and services that will go. Personally I don’t agree with the ‘ring fencing’ of Health etc, but that’s a whole different debate.
Meanwhile I was pleased to see Nigel Smith of OGC stressing that just using existing collaborative deals and frameworks will not be enough to drive the sort of savings needed; we’ve been banging on about that for some time here and in our White Paper. We need to see public sector organisations getting together and aggrgating their demand – committing their volume – to get a step change in leverage and value. (A note of caution though; different approaches will be needed in different categories, so beware a one size fits all approach…).
And of course, and in addition to the collaboration and leverage, a hard look at demand, specifications, contract management, and complexity of supplier obligations all need to contribute to driving the savings required.
