Sign in / up

back to article UK.gov brings Whitehall procurement under one roof

The government has created a new Chief Procurement Officer role in an effort to drive down costs by bringing the buying of goods and services under one roof in Whitehall. John Collington will head up UK.gov's efforts to centralise procurement spending and oversee the Buying Solutions agency. He previously worked in a very …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. zaax
    Jobs Horns

    £250 hammers

    Will this mean the end to the £250 hammer or £50 to change a light blub?

    0 0
    1. fridaynightsmoke
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      Don't be silly;

      we're talking about the government here. They'll negotiate savings so the hammers will drop to a bargain £50, yet inflation and new green and health&safety standards will push the light bulb change to £250...

      I seem to remember reading about changing bulbs at BBC TV Centre costing more like £500/bulb, but TBH that might have been Mail bull, I can't remember where I saw it.

      /flames, because the necessary paperwork is highly flammable and requires a full risk assesment, which itself will be flammable...

      0 0
    2. JimC
      Reply Icon

      > end of £250 pound hammer?

      Most likely the opposite... these sorts of people love setting up the sort of horribly complicated deals where a few headline items are dirt cheap and the margin is whacked up on the opther stuff...

      0 0
  2. Christoph

    Nice in theory

    But in practice, does anything even slightly non-standard have to go through multiple layers of approval all the way up to central purchasing? Even say a box of odd size staples?

    0 0
  3. Captain Scarlet
    Thumb Down

    They're not doing it already?

    Seems a bit last minute to start doing that now

    0 0
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Badgers

    ooh cheap toys

    It will drive down upfront costs, reduce efficiency, increase bureaucracy, increase outsourcing, result in more failed projects and increase downstream costs the procurement office didn't foresee... but otherwise a fine idea that deserves all the praise it receives.

    0 0
  5. Colin Millar
    Megaphone

    Jobs for the boys and girls

    1) Get guvment to set up a new bureacratic industry

    2) Eat strategy docs for breakfast dinner and tea

    3) Identify boxes to be ticked

    4) Tell em exactly what they want to hear

    5) You know the rest

    Alternatively

    1) Stop banging multi-shaped pegs into the same round hole

    2) Produce an output that someone actually wants instead of slavishly following a strategy document thought up by a one-step-ahead of the responsibility policy officer

    3) Find out that you can dispense with all that expensive emergency intervention on failure stuff

    4) Save taxpayers wonga

    1 0
  6. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    @They're not doing it already?

    You need a pen.

    Current system - you go down to Staples and put in an expenses claim.

    New system -

    1, You apply to your local purchasing laison committee

    2, They inform you when the next meeting of the department pen procurement committee is

    3, Your request for a pen is rolled up with all other pen requests until it's forwarded to the department's purchasing department

    4, This then waits until all the agency's pen requests are forwarded to number 10 for approval

    5, The people's central pen purchasing committee isn't buying any pens this year because:

    a, The budget wasn't approved

    b, The pens are imported from country X and we are waiting until the next state visit of the president of X to announce an order

    c, We are currently expecting a visit from president of Y who is at war with X so can't announce an order

    d, We want somebody to open a pen factory in a marginal constituency

    e, Politician needs to be seen to be tough on pens this week

    6, Bids then go out for pens to BAe, CapGemini and whatever Anderson is called this week

    7, Before pens are delivered the department is merged, renamed, re-elected and the order is cancelled

    8, You go to staples and pay for the pen yourself

    9, Savings!!!!

    I once worked in a university where all the computer purchases for every department in this subject across the country were all brought together at a single annual purchase by a central body - to get bulk discounts. You can imagine how well this worked!

    0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.