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Time for new PPP models

By John Tizard, Director, Centre for Public Service Partnerships Why is it that so many companies that deliver public services through contracts with the public sector apparently think that the public sector’s entire response to expenditure pressures should be to outsource more to them? They seem to have misread the political, economic and operational tea [...]

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Flying the flag for ICT enabled public services

By Terry Street, Principal Consultant and Procurement and Outsourcing Product Manager, Socitm Consulting At its spring conference on 11 May at the Royal College of Surgeons, the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) launched what is seen as a first in the UK in terms of a national initiative for local government ICT linked to [...]

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Have you got what it takes?

By Morven MacNeil, GO Content Editor The annual GO Excellence in Public Procurement Awards Scotland returns this October – do you have a success story you would like to share? Now is your time to shine. As anyone working in public procurement in Scotland will testify, much has happened over the last year. In the [...]

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NHS IT – should Government switch off the Programme?

By Morven MacNeil, GO Content Editor The Government is coming under fierce pressure to shelve plans for a new NHS patient record system after the National Audit Office (NAO) produced a report which concluded that the scheme could waste another £4.3 billion in the next four years. The NAO report, entitled The National Programme for [...]

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TUPE matters and should be strengthened, not diluted

By John Tizard, Director, Centre for Public Service Partnerships The Government has announced that as part of a wider review of labour market regulation it wishes to consider the future of TUPE. If this is about finding ways of avoiding TUPE it would be very regrettable, especially at a time when the Government is also [...]

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Safeguarding the NHS – who really understands commissioning?

By Doug Forbes, Director, Institute of Commissioning Professionals In watching the emerging debate on Health Reform, the key question is; what is the problem it is designed to fix? So far, it’s about the effect of the ageing population and rising costs. What has not been discussed is that the current system is designed to [...]

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Outcomes vs Specifications

By Terry Street, Principal Consultant and Procurement and Outsourcing Product Manager, Socitm Consulting Outcomes are hailed as the all-new future-proofed approach to procurement specifications that let you ignore how it’s done and just focus on the results. Well, that’s the theory. But how well does it stand up in practice? The social sector has been [...]

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Campaigning for greater efficiency?

By Morven MacNeil, GO Content Editor Today’s the day for all the devolved government elections; after weeks of campaigning we’ll soon find out which parties have been returned to office. But will a change of government have an impact on the efficiency agenda? Will the budgets already set be dramatically revised? GO makes a case [...]

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The new public service delivery business must be different

By John Tizard, Director, Centre for Public Service Partnerships If I were setting up a new public service delivery business I would …… want to make a reasonable and sustainable commercial return (popularly known as ‘profit’), serve my customers in an exemplar manner, to share benefits and profits, and be their strategic partner in reality [...]

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Modernising procurement – will the Commission deliver?

By Nick Maltby, Senior Commercial Lawyer at Bircham Dyson Bell LLP Public sector cuts and the Government’s spending review has put procurement process and efficiency under the spotlight as the deadline for comments on the European Commission’s Green Paper on the modernisation of procurement rules passed this week. Input has been gathered into how European [...]

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