The backlash against Lord Young and the most recent government drive to promote MSME participation in public procurement is already underway. We posted on Lord Young’s two reports (http://tinyurl.com/nb33p7x) yesterday, the latter of which (May 2013) made a number of recommendations which the Government have announced that they will be implementing. The response set out…

Continuing with the theme of promoting engagement by SMEs in public procurement, Computer World UK highlights an intriguing statistic which may give the lie to the Government claims that its strategies are working. Comparing stats for direct and indirect spend on SMEs it seems apparent that the increasing engagement of SMEs is, in fact, at…

In so many areas of life, behaviours in business can be a lag-follower of social and personal behaviours. Not so surprising, really, because it is obviously the same people who naturally take their social and personal behaviours into work. We have said on a number of occasions that the Blog thinks that eprocurement is at…

Surveys are a bit like buses – you wait ages for one then, blah, blah, etc, etc. Anyway, here is the CBI Public Sector Procurement Survey 2013. Given the amount of, often quite trenchantly expressed, commentary whirling round the Blogosphere we have no doubt that there is no shortage of respondents. Go on, have your…

A very topical theme (on this blog and more widely) is the place of small business in public procurement and the responsibilities that both central and local government and other public bodies with money to spend have towards micro, small and medium-sized suppliers. We live in a public procurement environment in which there is much…

Peter Smith from Spend Matters is presenting a session at the eWorld Purchasing and Supply Event on 24 September 2013 at QEII Conference Centre. Peter’s session has a mouthful of a title: “Public and Private Sector procurement – what is the difference and what on earth is commissioning?”. In advance of the event he is…

As the UK economy looks like it is beginning to achieve “exit trajectory” (what a wonderful expression!) from its recessionary status it is easy to have in one’s mind’s eye a single space rocket with “UK” emblazoned on the side of breaking free from the gravitational pull of negative growth (another fabulous expression) and readying…

Amongst many statistics in the Deloitte report “Charting the course: Why procurement must transform itself by 2020” (linked below) two stand out for us. First, the proportion of Chief Procurement Officers across sectors who are increasingly uncertain about the future shape of procurement (and the degree of increase in that uncertainty) and, second, the perception…

What is regarded as “good” public procurement practice does not occur naturally. There is nothing startling in that assertion – unchecked and uncontrolled the processes and outcomes of public procurement will tend to be manipulated for the benefit of those in a position to pull the necessary levers. There are several checks and controls which…

We have posted recently (http://tinyurl.com/l6msnco) about, amongst other things, the “tick box” mentality which can be prevalent in public sector approaches to public procurement regulation compliance. Another contributory factor to significant inefficiency in procurement processes is the almost infinite range of subtly different PQQ’s which authorities require bidders to complete. The ubiquitous requirement to complete…