Where is my Pea-shooter?

“The UK government today revealed it is creating a central Efficiency and Reform Group that will have “Draconian” control over government spending”, so reads a recent e-publication from Supply Management. I was most encouraged to see that standardisation and market leverage were now in the mainstream of procurement thinking.

The ConDem Team has been nicely softening us up for major public expenditure reductions since their elevation to Government last month. Also, most encouraging from my perspective has been the sight of OGC ‘upping its game’ and politicians recognising just what procurement can deliver in terms of cashable savings. I believe that public procurement should be tasked with delivering at least £17.5 billion cashable savings over the next three financial years.  

The new ERG seems a great way of starting the process……but wait. Supply Management has inside information and the first category that the ERG will be looking at will be…..OFFICE SOLUTIONS. Yep, that is right, stationery, copier paper, furniture….the stuff that should have been cracked and sorted years ago and is now in the shopping category

From a local authority perspective, this ‘category’ accounts for about 0.3% of total spend. It is like trying to use a pea shooter to stop a Chieftain tank. At least start with ICT, we know what can be achieved with that and it is worth getting out of bed for.