Understanding the Public Services Industy

Public Services Industry Review
Recommendation 4: Partnerships
Partnership approaches between contractor and provider should be encouraged,
especially in the post-contract monitoring stage when both parties have the common
objective of delivering better public services.
5. Poor Commissioning and Project Management Skills
4.39 One issue which permeates all stages of the commissioning cycle is the quality of the
skills and expertise within government. It is ultimately people who procure, manage
and deliver public services and where these competencies are not fully developed or in
short supply, it is almost inevitable that problems will arise.
4.40 People involved in commissioning and project management need a wide range of
competencies in order to deliver value for money to the taxpayer. For example, in its
‘Improving Procurement’ report the NAO 49 identified the key skills of procurement
staff as 50 :
Management and Personal Skills
•
•
•
Develop relationships with customers and other professional groups in
departments;
Apply and encourage others to apply best practice; and
Negotiate with customers and suppliers.
Technical Skills
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•
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Apply public procurement principles and legal requirements, for example UK and
European law;
Prepare tender and contract documents;
Understand how prices are arrived at, estimate cost, and the ability to identify
and manage risk; and
Understand markets.
4.41 Clearly the role of the procurement professional is far broader than simply managing
the procurement process. Procurement staff need to understand the market in which
they operate and be comfortable discussing strategic issues with policy makers,
suppliers (both public and private sector) and specialist advisers such as lawyers,
competition experts etc.
49 Improving Procurement, NAO (2004).
50 Note that here the NAO is using the term ‘procurement’ to cover the whole commissioning cycle; the studies referred to
below also implicitly use a similar definition.
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