The Department will also provide support on a RoS-wide basis. It has the following remit. Through the Keeper, the Procurement Department has RoS-wide responsibility for strategic oversight of the acquisition and orderly management of the non-payroll purchase and supply of all bought-in goods and services required by RoS (with the exception of expenditure directly related to Land Register Indemnity claims and payments). It also has responsibility for developing Procurement policies and for undertaking regular reviews of strategies and accountability, timetables and indicators to measure progress and of the reporting framework suited to the management information needs of a structured planning environment. Dissemination of procurement information together with training and staff development in professional procurement and supply matters are important elements of the remit.
Commodity Management
The Procurement Department will seek to encourage and develop, from amongst the broad spectrum of RoS interests, a network of commodity specialists whereby experience and expertise can be tapped, harnessed and employed for the benefit of the wider community.
Performance Management
The Procurement Department will take action to establish, develop and maintain methods through which procurement performance can be measured and to make recommendations to secure improvements both in efficiencies and contributions to value-for-money audits.
Collaborative Procurement Relationships
Collaboration across public procurement functions provides opportunities for:
- better utilisation of procurement skills and resources’ greater purchasing leverage through aggregation of spend
- encouraging competition or innovation in markets (thereby providing value for money)
- maximising benefits
- the spread of best practice
Organisations should collaborate to achieve these benefits where it makes logical and commercial sense to do so.
In the absence of comparable local arrangement, where a requirement can be met and value for money achieved through the use of an existing contract (eg a contract put in place by one of the Centres of Expertise or another collaborative procurement agency), organisations should utilise the existing contract.
Contracting authorities should seek to collaborate wherever possible with the Centres of Expertise.
The aggregation of purchasing spend has the potential to provide significant value and benefit across the public sector. To assist the realisation of these potential benefits, areas of spend or categories have been grouped by sector specific attributes or commonality. These groupings define how and by whom in the national procurement structure, contracts are established for each of the categories.
Category A – National Contracts are established centrally and will include, for example, stationery and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). There is a presumption that National Contracts will be used by all organisations funded or owned by the public sector inScotland unless there are compelling and objective business reasons to the contrary.
Category B – Sector Specific Contracts are established within each sector (legal authorities, the health service, universities and colleges, and the Scottish Government and its agencies and Non-Departmental Public Bodies). There is a presumption that Category B contracts will be used by all organisations across the relevant sector unless there are compelling and objective business reasons to the contrary.
Category C – General Contracts for commodities and services which are neither classified as A (National Contracts) or B (Sector Specific Contracts) and which will be conducted as the remit of a single organisation.
Category C1 – Local/Regional Contracts for commodities and services which are neither classified as A (National Contracts) or B (Sector Specific Contracts) and which could be consolidated in a region or other grouping to the benefit or purchasing power and optimisation of skilled resources.
To enable organisations to identify and exploit opportunities for collaboration, contracting authorities should place details of all advertisements and contract on the national portal: www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk
RoS Procurement Department will, though its involvement with Scottish Procurement, work to consolidate and further develop the collaborative procurement and supply relationships within the Scottish Central Government as well as NHS, Higher Education Authorities and Local Authorities.
Working with Suppliers
The Review of Public Procurement in Scotland recognised that “The existence of a base of high quality and cost competitive suppliers is the optimum environment in which to achieve Best Value in procurement expenditure”
RoS has signed up to the Scottish Government Supplier’s Charter for Scottish contracting authorities. It defines the generic standards which suppliers can expect from contracting authorities and the standards which will in turn be expected of them as suppliers to the public sector.
The Charter sets out a number of commitments for contracting authorities, including:
- Adequate publicity of contract opportunities;
- Use of a core qualification questionnaire; and
- Provision of tender debriefing to any supplier that requests it.
It also commits contracting authorities to ongoing dialogue with businesses to achieve change.
The Charter commits business organisations to encourage their members to adhere to the Charter, recognise the legislative framework in which public procurement operates and make effective use of their skills and resources in bidding competitively for and providing specified quality/delivery on public sector goods, services and works