Cabinet Minister says UK Govt procurement failings due to bad data

17 Nov 2010

Source:  The Telegraph
As UK retail tycoon Sir Philip Green's review of government buying confirmed, Whitehall's lack of commercial nous is the private sector's gain.  Cabinet Minister and Paymaster General, Francis Maude prefers ‘incontinent’ buying to ‘incompetent’ when describing the behaviour of some of his procurement teams across Government.

"The top-line finding,  and it was really interesting to have brought out so forcefully – was how bad the data is," Maude says. "How on earth can you run big complex organisations like this when the data is so bad? Pure management information; how many procurement people do you employ, what do you spend on this, how much does that cost? Very, very important." Since July, when he first hauled in the senior management teams of the Government's 19 largest suppliers, he has made some progress. An estimated reduction in contract costs for the second half of 2010 of £800m will now be exceeded, he says.

His team is now beginning interviews with 34 second-tier suppliers. Maude says the reaction from suppliers to his demands for in-year and future savings was 'mixed'.

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