News Update
Week Ending 5th November 2004
1. The Management Board met on 3rd November 2004 to consider the
changing role of the Centre in the light of the Gershon Efficiency Review,
the
Workstream Leadership and Membership and the Exemplar Project Bids.
Efficiency Review
2.
The Centre will have a major role in assisting the achievement by
Councils of the Efficiency Review Savings. At the moment not everything is
clear e.g. the role of the DFES Centre of Procurement Excellence and the
achievement of savings by schools and the Centre’s role in the Pay and Workforce
Strategy/Capacity Building. The Technical Note from the ODPM has been delayed
slightly but you can find Technical Notes for everything apart from local
government on the Treasury website (www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/performancedocs).
The ODPM note covers Central Admin, Social Housing and Fire. It shows
significant re-location of posts to Government Offices and target savings of
£619m per annum by 2007/8 (of which £424m will be cash releasing) broken down by
Gershon Workstream with 60% coming from procurement and only 3% from shared
services. It gives a flavour of the sort of annual reporting Councils will be
required to make.
Workstreams and Projects
3.
Allerdale Borough Council has agreed to lead the Local Economies
Workstream. An up to date list can be found
here.
4.
The Management Board emphasised that activity within workstreams should
mainly be organised on a project basis and that there will normally be several
projects within a workstream. There is a danger that the exemplar project bids
are perceived as the totality of what we wish to achieve. The advantage of this
project based approach is to focus on activity which has clear deliverables
which support the Centre’s objectives and which can be evaluated and monitored.
5.
The Management Board considered the exemplar project bids and gave
support and criticism as follows:
6.
Collaborative Services Workstream – Proposal for Shared Services by
Cheshire Councils
This project has the commitment of the Cheshire Leaders and letters of
support from the Councils involved. It intends to deliver shared back office
services initially with targeted savings of up to £3.23m. It will provide, with
private sector partnership, a base for future savings by extending the number of
customers and by extending collaboration into transactional services which have
a common or national set of rules and regulations. It will also provide a
replicable model of partnership implementation and operation.
The Management Board supported the bid and recommended that costs be reviewed as
they looked light and that a more detailed programme be included. It was also
agreed to include learning from other similar projects e.g. East Lancs
Partnership.
It was agreed that we were looking for more than sub-regional groupings in order
to take advantage of the power of the region although such groupings may
provide, as in this case, a useful base for expansion.
7.
Collaborative Services Workstream – Proposal for 24/7 Contact Centre
via Liverpool Direct
This project is designed to extend the use of Liverpool best practice
Contact Centre to other Councils and public bodies including the reengineering
of back office processes. The Management Board felt is was not clear what
additionality the project would provide over and above that which was being done
anyway. It was suggested that a more focused proposal should be made, perhaps
around specific services and with specific commitments from participating
Councils.
8.
Construction Workstream – Proposal for a Programme of Work by St
Helens and Manchester Councils with Centre for Construction Innovation (CCI)
This proposal builds on work which is acknowledged nationally as best practice,
brining together the existing extensive CCI network and its work with the
Regional Development Agency, together with Councils who have a proven track
record in delivering best value and rethinking construction. It will initially
deliver four packages of work, two of which are based on aggregated demand
across the region and strategic sourcing to achieve targeted savings – the first
of these being carriageways dark bitumen mastic; the other two relate to
promoting best practice, building capacity and avoiding duplication of
professional efforts. Once the first work packages are delivered the workstream
programme will proceed on a self-financing basis.
The Management Board strongly supports this proposal. It was pleased to see
District Councils actively involved in the workstream. It recognised that some
of the training, the best practice, checklists, and simplified PRINCE2
methodology would be beneficial across the Board and there would need to be
close liaison with the Standards Workstream.
It was also important for the Contracts and Construction Workstream to
coordinate actively and to avoid duplication.
9.
Contracts Workstream – Proposal by Knowsley Council for a Sourcing,
Procurement and Strategic Cost Management Project
This proposal builds on the work done by FUSION 21 in the Social Housing
market which has been taken further by Knowsley Council using the same processes
and the same procurement consultants, Value Works. It involves an initial piece
of work with a pilot number of Councils within the workstream to aggregate
demand and to use strategic sourcing to deliver targeted savings and to provide
a demonstrable model for others to follow and open contracts for others to use.
Following the initial pilot the process will be open to others both other
procurement consultants and other Councils. It will also become a
self-financing programme.
The Management Board fully supported this proposal with the following comments
made in discussion. It was hoped that more Councils might be able to join in
part two of the proposed process i.e. product sourcing and contract negotiation
if they had clear measured demand which they could pre-commit. It was accepted
that if we are to build on existing work, we will necessarily engage with
existing suppliers/contractors e.g. Value Works. However it was important to
build in at an appropriate point some competitive challenge, say when the model
had been demonstrated to work.
On a more general point it was noted that this is but one project albeit a major
project within the Workstream. Another project will need to look at existing
contracts available through existing aggregated demand/consortia arrangements
and to make the best of those available to all Centre members. Another project
dealing with Refuse Vehicles and Transport will be led by Wigan.
10.
e-Procurement Workstream – Proposal by the North West e-Government
Group (NWeGG) for Workstream Deliverables
This proposal is based on the recognised successful work of the NWeGG
partnership which already has the active support of North West Councils and is
well-placed to help to secure efficiencies from the investment in e-Government
already made by the ODPM. The proposal takes into account the outputs from ODPM
National Projects. This is the technology workstream which will support all
other workstreams. It will provide easy access to procurement cards and
e-auction facilities. Its major deliverables will be two related pieces of
work:
°
An e-marketplace where access to regional and indeed national
contracts can be made from the existing e-procurement systems and which will
provide a common interface to suppliers for ordering and payment. The proposal
is to build on the Roses Marketplace which currently has the largest number of
subscribers and provides a real possibility of linking with other regions in a
practical way.
°
A business gateway where businesses can register their interests
in doing business with the public sector and can receive information on how to
do that business and on procurement opportunities.
The Management Board supported
the project. It recognised the need to build on existing strengths and the
reason for the joint proposal with the Roses Marketplace, but it was also
concerned that other suppliers would be able to provide facilities on a
competitive basis once the pilot work had been done and the model of working
established. It also felt that guidance should be available on the adoption of
e-procurement and on securing the benefits from this and it was agreed that this
would be done using the services of the ODPM’s National e-Procurement Project
(NEPP).
All agreed that there was a need to share
experiences on how to get real benefit from e-procurement and the information
and potential control over spending which it gives.
11.
Health and Social Care Workstream – Proposal by Rochdale Council to
develop further the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) Out of
Area Placements Project
This proposal is to develop further and to roll-out a project which AGMA has
developed over a period of time and which will aggregate demand, implement
call-off contracts, common accreditation processes etc. for the placement of
children out of their own Council’s care systems. The project has targeted
savings and is essentially self-financing: it has already been decided that a
unit should be established under the Regional Centre’s director.
The additional one-off funding is sought to help to develop additional market
capacity which is essential if costs are to fall significantly and to roll-out
the service to others.
The Management Board supported this proposal. It felt there were significant
tangible benefits to be gained and that there was already a strong commitment
which had been developed over a period of time.
It was also pointed out that there was a need for other targeted project work
within this workstream as it was a particular focus of the Efficiency Review.
12.
Standards Workstream – Proposal by Blackpool and Salford Councils, the
Workstream leaders
This proposal is to create standard processes, templates, how to guides,
terms and conditions, model contracts, to promote them and to make them
available on the PERFORM 21 website (www.perform21.com).
The latter was created as a best practice standards toolkit for the procurement
of property-related services as part of an ODPM Beacon which has 17 public and
private sector contributors. Consultation will be required to agree the scope
and prioritisation of what is to be provided and indeed to bring out existing
expertise etc. It was stressed that this was not just about a website but was
more to do with the assembly and dissemination of information which would
increase productivity.
The Management Board supported the proposal in that it is an essential part of
delivering the Business Plan but it would want to see the results of the initial
exercise before all the funding was committed.
13.
Project Evaluation
It was agreed during the discussion of the project bids that the evaluation
criteria which emerged in those discussions should be captured and then
formalised. Key factors were:
°
Measurable benefits linked to business plan objectives.
°
Sustainability – the extent to which continued activity can be
funded from savings.
°
Additionality – what extra does the project provide taking into
account the baseline over and above that which would be achieved anyway.
°
Inclusivity – does the project have wide support, does it take
account of wide range of experience, doe it benefit from regional setting.
°
Commitment – is there clear commitment from those involved.
°
Roll-out – can it be used by others regionally, nationally, is it
open to other service providers?
It was agreed that a formal
evaluation process would be developed to include the above.
Member Involvement
14.
Members are central to delivering the business plan and as a first we
need to ensure that members are fully briefed. Work needs to be done within out
individual authorities as well as at a regional and subregional level.
Please will you let the Centre know who is the Cabinet Member in your authority
who is responsible for an overview of the Efficiency Review and Procurement.
(email: nwcope@tameside.gov.uk)
Paul Dowthwaite
9th November 2004
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