The full report
is HERE and the recommendations are below
Recommendation 1
Welsh Government
procurement policy should
be consolidated into a
single ‘Policy and
Practices Document’ which
would be available as a handbook
for leaders, executives and procurement professionals to use as a blueprint for
their conduct of all public procurement.
Recommendation 2
Given that
further progress is heavily dependent upon practical implementation, rather
than on new
policy, implementation of public procurement
policy should be
regarded as a duty rather than
an option. In
the short term,
this duty should
be made mandatory
through its inclusion
as a condition
of grant for
all public sector funding
provided to organisations
by the Welsh Government.
It is
also recommended that
the Welsh Government
strongly consider introducing legislation in the medium term that would make the
duty to adopt
and implement policy
a legal requirement, as well as a condition of grant.
Recommendation 3
The Welsh
Government should formally
adopt the content
and recommendations of
the Buying Smarter
in Tougher Times
Report into
Welsh public procurement
policy thus making
its acceptance and implementation mandatory.
Recommendation 4
To correct
any misconception over
targets, the Welsh Government should
confirm that it
expects delivery of
a balanced set of wider benefits.
Recommendation 5
t should
also be a
duty to ensure
that the function
of procurement within every
public sector body is staffed with skilled procurement resource to a level that is adequate to
support the public body’s obligations
for governance, and
delivery of the Welsh Government’s policies and required
practices. This should include appropriate
recognition of the
value and positioning
of procurement within
organisational structures.
Recommendation 6
Local Government
should take urgent steps to address its skills deficit and in particular the
serious shortfalls in resources at some authorities.
Recommendation 7
Given that
staffing at the
Welsh Government Corporate Procurement Services
unit seems inadequate,
the Welsh Government should
examine patterns and
granularity of
Spending
covered by the service to establish where it should be benchmarked for
resources given the unique nature of activities.
Recommendation 8
The Welsh Government
should sponsor the reintroduction of regular ‘procurement capability
assessments’.
Recommendation 9
Given the
scale of the
skills deficit the Home
Grown Talent programme should be expanded to provide a greater
number of trainees
Recommendation 10
The Welsh
Government should commission
a full and
formal survey of procurement
resources and professional
skill levels in the public sector.
Recommendation 11
The mandatory
duty for all
funded bodies to
adopt Welsh Government
procurement policy should
include delivering the wider benefits of economic, social and
environmental impacts.
Recommendation 12
All bodies
in Wales funded by the Welsh
Government should be required to
include in their annual reports a statement describing how they
have delivered on the policy
of wider benefits,
and should show and comment on the value and % proportion of their total
procurement expenditure that has been spent in Wales and also with SMEs.
Recommendation 13
The concept
of directly linking
economic development, and specifically supplier
support and development,
to public procurement should be vigorously pursued.
The lead
role and strategic
responsibility of the
Business, Enterprise, Technology
and Science Division in this area should be underlined in
a formal communication
to the public
sector in Wales. New
mechanisms to work
directly with procurement operations across Wales should be
developed and should require the
appropriate participation of
individual and collaborative
procurement units.
Recommendation 14
The budget
for investment in supplier support and development should be reviewed and
increased to provide wider and more in depth coverage of the priorities
described above.
If funding
cannot be augmented then the available resources and finances should be
concentrated on priority areas that will provide the greatest and potentially quickest
return. Given the value of spend and its
relevance to the economy the construction
sector should be considered as a prime candidate for this concentrated approach.
Recommendation 15
The Welsh
Government should identify the factors that contribute to a higher proportion
of spending with SMEs, and require plans
from the
lower performing organisations
to bring them
to that level.
Recommendation 16
Interaction
with the third sector should be reviewed with a view to fully understanding its
concerns about public procurement and the contribution it can make to wider
benefits.
Ways should
be found to enable
practical engagement with
the public sector
in
designing
services to support defined outcomes.
The recommendations of
the ‘Barriers to
Procurement Opportunity’ research
should be implemented
as soon as possible
and in particular
overall implementation of
the SQuID tool should be a
priority.
Recommendation 17
A specific
standalone programme for
the construction sector should
be initiated immediately
so that those
with highest expectations of SQuID can experience early
progress.
Recommendation 18
A
replacement IT solution for Sell2Wales should be introduced at an early date.
Recommendation 19
Within the
operating model local procurement is not
conducted consistently well and especially
within Local Government.
I recommend that all
organisations address this
at an early
date including correcting contributing weaknesses in staffing.
Recommendation 20
To substantially
improve the collaborative
coverage and the effectiveness
of the operating model, I recommend that the Welsh Government sponsor
and provide funding support to
establish a new national
procurement service to
address the national,
common and repetitive
categories of spending.
This proposal is described in detail in section 6 of the full report
Recommendation 21
Given the low proportion
of Local Government
spending that is conducted
against collaborative contracts, I
recommend that the Local Government sector a) invests substantially more
in existing consortia to increase
the collaborative coverage
of unique Local Government sector
categories, and b)
participates actively in a new
national procurement service.
Recommendation 22
Given the
level of collaborative
spending by the
Welsh Government and
its Sponsored Bodies,
I recommend that
the spending of Welsh Government Sponsored Bodies come under the remit of
its Corporate Procurement
Service, so that
one professional procurement
unit can provide
the WGSBs and
the Welsh Government
departments with unified
support, including access to,
and use of, collaborative contracts from all sources.
Recommendation 23
The system
of governance should be “tuned” to ensure that it is effective in having
clear line of
sight responsibility and accountability vertically down and
horizontally across the layers of procurement
activity. I recommend that the membership of the Procurement Board
is reviewed to
ensure that there
is 100% representation of all procurement operations
in the public sector and, that within
this review the
Chairs of the
two Local
Government
purchasing consortia in Wales
be appointed to the
Procurement Board.
Recommendation 24
The model
of governance should be used even more effectively to drive progress by
examining and measuring
performance. I recommend that the
Measurement Framework contain a relatively small number of data driven performance indicators
addressing
the
critical success factors for procurement and this “dashboard” format
be adopted by
every organisation in
the Welsh public
sector.
Summaries of
these key performance
indicators and adoption
and implementation of
Value Wales programmes
and tools, should be
reviewed sector by
sector or consortium
by consortium at the Procurement
Board.
Recommendation 25
During
this review I observed a deficit of
essential data and also problems in transforming
available data into
management information. I recommend that the Welsh Government
considers making an appropriate investment in this capability.
Recommendation 26
Implementation
of the programmes and tools that support Welsh
Government policy should
also be mandatory
and use of the
Sell2Wales advertising channel
for all OJEU
and Sub-OJEU contracts but above
local thresholds, should be the focus of early action.
Although
the xchangewales service has been extremely effective in its delivery of
e-procurement, new investment is required.
This should only be made if
organisations across the
public sector commit to using the
service.
Recommendation 27
The
imperative of overseeing,
examining and intervening across the
public sector to
drive implementation of
policy and the
adoption of required practices should become a core part of Value Wales’ activities. The allocation and prioritisation
of resources, communication of the authority vested in it and its position
within the sector should be consistent with this realignment.
Recommendation 28
The
mission and structure of Value Wales should be reviewed for assurance that its current responsibility for
providing operational services to the Welsh Government and the wider public
sector is consistent with the
intense and independent
focus required on
policy
adoption and implementation
