Centralisation of UK Procurement Frameworks

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#1

Good Evening,

We are interested in understanding how to use this platform to discuss the Centralisation of UK Procurement Frameworks or in the case of devolved powers a country by country centralisation of procurement frameworks.

It is a seemingly impossible task to comprehend the depth of the range of procurement platforms such as The Digital Marketplace, Contract Finder and the many more public and private platforms and their frameworks.

We believe this means opportunities are missed and access to the market is extremely exclusive as a result of the confusion.

We would like to open the discussion but don’t quite understand how to on this platform as there seems to only be 3 categories on creating new topics.

#2

Jonathan,
Good question.
Suspect the answer, UK-wide is unavailable at the moment following Brexit.
In Scotland, procurement is the legal responsibility of each public body [though it does not stop some ad hoc centralisation from time to time]. Within that and since 2012, Scotland’s specific equality duties [extension of the Equality Act 2010] have contained poorly worded obligation for bodies to take the general equality duty into account when deciding to whom any contract should.
It looks good on paper, but you will find little hard evidence that the public sector has used it to, say, eliminate discrimination against BME people.
The specic equality duties in Scotland are slated for review soon, so it would be good timing to look at how a marriage of procurement and the Equality Act can be made more effective.

#3

Blockchain will be the more secure mechanism to deliver both local and national government procurement.
There’s growing groundswell concern that meeting SDG’s is detrimental to western living standards. Car ownership and the ability to park a vehicle outside one’s home, a workers parking levy £1000 p.a, and the colossal waste of public money spent vandalising roads to accommodate cyclists.

#4

Absolutely… while the news is dominated by the fevered markets of BTC, ETH and DeFi etc, the real news story is the resilience of blockchain technologies to deliver these phenomena and the evolution of proof-of-stake and other trustless network protocols that make it a lot less compute/energy intensive. Networks like AVAX allow subchains and are compatible with Ethereum’s smart-contract implementation and would be an ideal platform for local authorities to build on. There is Polkadot and others.

As a District Councillor I have tried a couple of times to get the IT guy’s at my Council to take an interest. Its all too much for them. What is needed are some good use cases and I have started to look at this when time allows. Any thoughts or ideas would be very welcome !

John

#5

Hi Philippa,
I would find it helpful to have a plain English version of this.
Blockchain is a concept beyond my ken.
In similar terms I am not quite sure where procurement and making it more accessible to people who are marginalised links to us a discussion of the merits of active travel policies [I confess to being a cyclist in and around Edinburgh].

#6

Two online resources that may help.

Find a Tender is the UK replacement for the EU Tenders Electronic Daily (Procurement Policy Note 08/20 - Introduction of Find a Tender - GOV.UK)

There is a live consultation on transforming public procurement (New plans set out to transform procurement, providing more value for money and benefitting small business - GOV.UK)

Regards

AB