Treasury unveils public sector procurement plan

The Treasury unveiled a strategy for improving public sector procurement last week, but it was unable to clarify how the reforms would benefit the channel as CRN went to press.

In its Transforming Government Procurement document, the Treasury outlined its vision for re-shaping the government’s procurement agenda. Under the plan, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) will become a ‘smaller, higher calibre’ organisation with ‘powers to set out the procurement standards departments need to meet’.

Asked how the re-shaping would affect public sector IT procurement, an OGC representative told CRN that it was too early to comment.

“The OGC’s role will change to focus on central government procurement,” he said. “Currently, we cover the wider public sector as well. The two core areas that we will focus on are information systems and professional service.”

The Treasury has also challenged suppliers to raise their game and commit themselves to meet ‘high standards of fairness, openness, efficiency and professionalism that can bring mutual reward’.

Pierre Lams, founder of VAR Handheld PCs, said: “We did a lot of local authority projects. However, as the opportunities got bigger we found we had to partner with O2 to provide mobile managed services to local authorities because it is one of the few partners that were recognised by the OGC. It would certainly be easier for resellers if the government opened up the framework agreements to include smaller players as well.”

Pete Mistry, technical sales consultant at VAR Eclipse, said: “The government procurement systems needs to be changed from the ground up. The bigger reseller of this world cannot provide as much focus as smaller, specialist firms such as us.

“That is not a criticism, it is a fact. They deal with hundreds of government contracts whereas we only handle a few so can provide a more specialist approach.”

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