SME Contracts

On 11 February 2011, Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office announced a broad package of reforms designed to significantly open-up the public sector marketplace to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). These announcements highlight the Government’s commitment to driving growth in the economy, and removing unnecessary obstacles that make government procurement difficult for small businesses.

The measures signal a step-change for how the public sector will do business with SMEs and are also central to our commitments to make this Government one of the most transparent and accountable in the world.

These measures are outlined below. 

For government procurers we have issued:

• Procurement Policy Note - Transparency
• Procurement Policy Note - Further measures to promote SME procurement 

Contracts Finder

Contracts Finder is the new central government procurement portal for businesses launched on 11 February 2011. It will act as a single source of information on all new  procurement opportunities, tender documents and contracts for central government over £10,000.

Contracts Finder can send suitable opportunities directly to businesses free of charge.

• Contracts Finder is hosted on the Business Link website 

Transparency of procurement and contracts 

At the end of May 2010, the Prime Minister made three important commitments regarding transparency of procurement and contracting in central government. These commitments required government departments to publish:

• new ICT contracts from July 2010
• tenders documents from September 2010
• all new contracts from January 2011

A report has been developed which shows the progress being made against each of the three commitments by each core Whitehall department as of 9 February 2011.

• Transparency progress report [CSV/Excel version]
• Transparency progress report [PDF]

Continual progress is being made by departments in terms of the number and range of opportunities, tenders and contracts being published and the Contracts Finder system is being developed to improve ease of use and accessibility of data. The report represents what has been achieved since January 2011.

Members or the public or suppliers can use Contracts Finder to monitor and analyse exactly what government departments and their arms length bodies have bought or are planning to buy.

Looking forward, a key feature of the system design is to provide, on a weekly basis, a downloadable list of all the documents published. 

Lean procurement review

Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office announced the publication of the Lean Review on 11 February 2011.

The Lean Review set out to:

• uncover wasteful practices and unnecessary complexity in the procurement process and to suggest actions to rectify them. 
• examine how the procurement process can be accelerated within central government to make doing business with government faster and cheaper for buyer and supplier. 

Working with 'lean' experts from industry and government and using data gathered from procurement professionals, business and policy officials across government, and a number of government’s key suppliers, the Review identified that there is significant potential to: 

• reduce turnaround time by up to 70% on competitive dialogue procurements (dependent on size, complexity and risk)
• reduce costs across those suppliers involved by £3.5 million 
• reduce government resource and processing costs by £400,000 per competitive dialogue

The following reports present the detailed findings that underpin these potential savings and provide the basis for improving government procurement.

• Lean Study - Accerlerating Government Procurement Study - Management Summary report [PDF]
• Lean  Procurement Project Diagnostic Findings [PDF]

Pre qualification to do business with government

Today sees the launch of a radically different way in which we will assess the firms we do business with by changing the policy and the process.

For all procurements in common commodities we will ensure systems allow suppliers to tell us their prequalification data once – and not submit the same data time and time again.  For all central government procurements under £100,000 (the EU threshold), we will seek to eliminate pre qualification questionnaires entirely, with procurers free to choose the best route to market for their individual circumstances.

For larger procurements we will move towards greater use of the ‘open procedure’, thus eliminating a separate selection stage early on in the process.

Where procurements require the completion of a pre-qualification questionnaire a further slimmed down version has been released for use across government.  

Further measures open up the government market to SMEs

• The introduction of a new ‘Crown Commercial Representative’ to build more strategic dialogue between Government and its smaller suppliers 
• The launch of SME Product Surgeries, led by the SME Crown Commercial Representative, to enable selected SMEs to 'pitch' innovative products and services to a panel of senior procurement and operational professionals from central government and the wider public sector. 
• From March all departments will be required to publish a set of specific, targeted actions to increase their business with SMEs. We will make this publically available and measure how well they do.
• A radically different way in which we will be specifying what we want.  We want to see procurers specifying clearly what they want, by outcomes, and to ensure that this happens we will use the Cabinet Office Major Projects Authority to check this is underway in all new major procurements. Where appropriate to the market, buyers will also be encouraged to break up requirements into ‘micro lots’.  
• To make sure we learn from the best of private sector practice, we are launching an interchange programme to bring in secondees from business into our procurement teams, to transfer skills and provide civil servants with broader experience in the commercial world as well as sharing their expertise about working with government.
• To extend the Cabinet Office’s Supplier Feedback Service, we have launched two new ways to hold us to account:
  • Become a ‘mystery shopper’ – if you see a tender you don’t understand, tell us and we will challenge the procurers to be more transparent and open
  • Join an SME Panel and hold our feet to the fire on delivering this exciting package of measures.