Cabinet Office | Procurement Insights

Browsing All posts tagged under »Cabinet Office«

BREAKING NEWS: Evidence of fraud on the part of government suppliers G4S and Serco reported by Minister of Justice by Colin Cram

July 11, 2013

Share prices of G4S and Serco dropped sharply today as Chris Grayling, the Minister of Justice, announced that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been asked to investigate G4S. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23272708 He said that there was evidence that both companies had overcharged the UK government by 10s of £millions for contracts related to tagging criminal offenders. […]

World Class Procurement by Colin Cram

May 6, 2013

What is world class procurement? That is the question that was asked last week at a conference that I was chairing. The topic was world class procurement in the NHS. Some people would argue that if an organisation has efficient and modern processes and procedures, category management, a highly qualified workforce, good information and performance […]

Margaret Thatcher: An Insider’s Perspective by Colin Cram (Part 1)

April 11, 2013

In 1980 I joined the Cabinet Office in 1980 as part of a team set up to support the efficiency and reform agenda of Margaret Thatcher’s newly elected government and to supplement the work of the then Sir Derek Rayner, the Prime Minister’s efficiency adviser. Continuing in that role within the Cabinet Office and then […]

Recent announcement by UK Government re open source software refocuses attention on PI 2007 post

June 25, 2011

Government departments were told in a Cabinet Office policy note (PDF) dated 31 January that they “should wherever possible deploy open standards in their procurement specifications”. In its note, it defined open standards at those that are “publicly available at zero or low cost” and that have “intellectual property made irrevocably available on a royalty-free […]

Just Say No To . . . A Government-Wide Free Spend Analysis?

April 20, 2011

Cabinet Office Declines Free Offer from Rosslyn Analytics and QlikTech to Fix Deficiencies in Central Government Procurement London, UK – 13 April 2011: The UK government’s failure to embrace the latest proven private sector technologies is costing the public sector billions in lost savings. Three weeks after announcing an unprecedented offer to aggregate public sector […]

Centralized Buying and Staff Reductions at The Heart of Whitehall Plan

November 16, 2010

What stands out the most to me based on a preliminary review of the Cabinet Office’s “plans to slash administration costs, including procurement operations, by £100 million in 2013-14,” is that the approach from a purchasing standpoint is at once a courageous acknowledgment of the need to make hard and even unpopular decisions, tempered by […]