Framework agreements designed to cut the cost of procurement for public sector organisations were introduced many years ago. In this feature Ross Macmillan describes how collaboration has been taken a step further by councils forming a consortium and the use of G-cloud.

Public sector adoption of technology in the UK has largely been perceived as slow for the most part, when compared with the private sector. Initiatives such as the Government’s Digital by Default agenda have made headway in driving public services online and, as such, have placed pressure on central and local government to replace or augment legacy systems with slicker, faster technologies and streamlined processes. Over the last five years, budget cuts have driven central and local government to seek alternatives to traditional tender exercises, which are typically resource intensive, costly and open to challenge.

The prospect of tendering for new service contracts can be a notoriously difficult affair, which is why several central government procurement frameworks have been established in recent years, both for central government, local authorities and the wider public sector.

Localised frameworks

There’s no doubt that national framework agreements are going the distance when it comes to negating the difficultly of navigating a tender exercise, but recently, in a bid to localise the solution, there is a growing trend for authorities to create local consortiums and frameworks, designed to offer the same benefits of national procurement frameworks, but with a bespoke approach.

Instead of covering a larger market of all services and technologies, they have been designed to focus on particular needs relating to specific demographics and markets.

A good recent example would be the national procurement led by Surrey County Council for the provision of prepaid cards available to all UK local authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups and covering the disbursement of funding for services such as adult social care, personal health budgets, and foster carers.

The prepaid market and suppliers are not yet fully understood by all local authorities and the framework, by nature of the original tender, has appointed suppliers of a proven quality, thus minimising the work for local authorities in going to tender and assessing the responses themselves. And with costs of an OJEU-compliant tender between £20,000 – 30,000, the framework is producing radical cost savings for local authorities. It also provides the added assurance of a local authority buying on behalf of other authorities.

Local authorities procuring on behalf of other authorities to reduce costs and administrative burden, while not new, is also something on the increase.

As part of these joint procurements, the cost and administrative burden can be radically reduced. More often than not, it will be led by a lead authority and may pull in resource from the other authorities for the tender requirements and assessments, but it’s done only once as oppose to multiple times if those authorities were to procure such services individually.

Additionally, frameworks led by specialised framework organisations, driven by their member requirements – such as the South East Consortium or Consortium Procurement are continuing to reduce costs and administration and provide access to proven quality suppliers and innovation.

G-Cloud

The Government’s digital-by-default agenda is also shaking up central government procurement, with the launch of both the Digital Services Framework and the G-Cloud Frameworks, providing departments, local authorities, charities and the wider public sector access to a pool of approved digital and IT suppliers needed to help departments build and run services that meet the Digital by Default Service Standard.

Unlike some of the unwieldy, traditional central government frameworks that may offer a streamlined way to access the few large system integrators, G-Cloud and the Digital Services Framework opens up the market to SMEs and genuine innovation with all suppliers having to be approved.

As a result, as of March 2015, sales for G-Cloud were £516 million, with 49 per cent in value going to SMEs.

The frameworks have provided the impetus for government to move away from legacy IT and big contracts with a few large systems integrators and procure flexible, secure and innovative services.

The emerging, supporting web of ‘mini’ frameworks and the trend for neighbouring authorities to collaborate to reduce strain on individual budgets sounds somewhat familiar of course. But with more than 95 per cent of local councils now using shared services, saving approximately £357 million between 2013 – 2014 (according to the Local Government Association), the merit in aligning tender requirements and being able to significantly reducing the time it takes to adopt new technology strongly suggests that we will see a very similar trend among consortiums for procurement.

The key word here is ‘choice’ – while many authorities look specifically to emerging technologies to increase cost efficiency and improve the lives of their citizens receiving public services, collaboration will continue to be critical to this mission.

Ross Macmillan is Market Intelligence Consultant with allpay