We have received this communication from the Government Commercial Function and we are sharing it with our members who may find this useful. 

As the government continues to prepare the Procurement Bill for introduction as soon as Parliamentary time allows, work also continues on the supporting infrastructure. You can learn more about the programme now on gov.uk here.

Learning & Development

Plans for the L&D programme  to support implementation of the new public procurement regime are firming up.  The following products will be free at the point of delivery: 

• short Knowledge Drops for anyone who needs an awareness of the reform programme (including suppliers and senior leaders) 
• a course of e-learning modules (plus certification) for procurement professionals in contracting authorities - the core product to provide knowledge and understanding of the new regime
• An intensive 3-day course of Deep Dives for a subset of those who have certificated from the e-learning
• Support for Communities of Practice to help embed learning.  

 

Central Digital Platform

Work is underway on delivering the Central Digital Platform that was originally outlined in Chapter 6 of the Green Paper. Rather than build something completely new and introduce another system into an already fragmented landscape, the Find a Tender Service (FTS) site will be developed to include new functionality. This will include supporting all the new notice types as well as the wider functions such as spend analytics. User research into how the system will work, naming conventions and testing understanding of future requirements is being carried out. If you would like to volunteer to assist with this user research, please sign up using this form.

National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS) and Procurement Policy Note 06/21 

Cabinet Office published PPN 06/21 in June 2021 which indicated legislative requirements would be introduced in April 2022 to require all contracting authorities to have regard to the statement, publish pipelines and benchmark their organisations. This legislation will not now come into force this year, but will likely form a part of the Procurement Bill. The principles behind the NPPS and associated requirements were to prepare contracting authorities for upcoming change, therefore it is strongly recommended that contracting authorities continue to have regard to the NPPS and consider publishing pipelines. 

Government Commercial Function guidance is available for the publication of a pipeline here and Find a Tender has recently introduced a new Pipeline Notice which allows contracting authorities to publish pipelines of forthcoming procurement activity.  This new notice is available to use now and Cabinet Office encourages all contracting authorities to begin publication. The functionality will be enhanced further in the coming months and we are working with e-procurement system providers to enable future integration. 

Keeping in touch

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