The Scottish Government

Best Practice Indicators

Key Messages

The fundamental principle of this project is to give procurement officers the tools and data they need so that they can decide what areas of procurement require reform within their organisation and then monitor their progress with that reform. At a national and sectoral level, the BPIs will also allow the Delivery Group and PPRB to track the progress of reform.

At their recent meeting in April 2009, the PPRB reaffirmed their commitment to the BPI project, and their expectation that public bodies will participate and report their BPIs.

To help all parts of the public sector in Scotland to monitor, manage and report on performance in a consistent, straightforward and cost-effective way, Procurement Best Practice Indicators ( BPIs) have been developed. These were announced last year by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth. Outputs will be reported to the Public Procurement Reform Board and Delivery Group to ensure that the public procurement reform programme is kept on track.

A Summary on BPIs is available online and an FAQ will be coming shortly.

Getting Started

The BPIs are reported via the Hub, therefore appropriate permissions and access must be arranged with Spikes Cavell. Procurement Managers who possess a Hub license should ensure that that their BPI permissions to input data and view outputs have been activated. Restricted access can also be given to staff members who will upload data, but not run output reports. Procurement Managers could consider the distribution of full licenses and BPI input rights within their organisation and email Spikes (copied to Jennifer Smith) with the names, email addresses and permissions for each person so that Spikes can allocate the appropriate access within each organisation.

How do I report my BPIs?

Completing a BPI report - to report the BPIs, organisations are required to upload:

• Summary Quarterly Spend Data,
• An Organisation profile, and
• A Contract Register

Download BPI data requirements specification and templates here: https://procurementnetwork.spikescavell.net/ViewResource.aspx?rid=2

You will need a Hub licence to log in to the Procurement Network to download these documents. If you do not have a login, please contact the Spikes Cavell Support team via email support@spikescavell.net or on 01635 556999 and they will email the documents to you.

Organisations should include data for the financial year 2007/08 in their first report, and then complete a report every quarter thereafter, according to the following timetable:

Summary Quarterly Spend Data (Refresh Lite)

This is a summary file containing total spend values and number of transactions, by supplier, per month.

In response to feedback that the quarterly spend upload (refresh lite) format required some users to manually consolidate numerous spend lines with a single supplier into one summary line, Spikes Cavell are currently testing a new tool which can convert invoice level data into the summary-level format. This tool is currently not web-based and therefore only available for Spikes Cavell staff to use. If a significant number of organisations confirm that it is easier to extract the data in this format, Spikes Cavell will build the conversion into a future version of the data input tools, as an alternative option to the existing summary level upload for quarterly data.

If you wish to produce a quarterly spend file in the invoice level format please contact Spikes Cavell who will send you the template. Please note that you should not attempt to upload spend files in this format directly into the Hub - instead please email them to Spikes Cavell who will convert the file and send it back to you for upload (this may take a few days).

As participants in the BPI project your feedback on these improvements to the process is appreciated and will help determine any future developments.

Other recent enhancements to the upload process include a redesigned upload tool, with a process map and detailed step by step guidance to help users navigate through the upload process, and to identify and rectify errors. The Centres of Expertise and SPD will run a series of sectoral events to provide up-to-date guidance on the BPI project, and to demonstrate the new system.

Contract Register

There are two parts to this process:

1. Uploading a file containing details of contracts for which the organisation is the contracting authority (Category C or C1), or 'Other' (O) type contracts such as OCG. In the case of C1 contracts the authority will also have to indicate which other public bodies are entitled to use the contract. (Category A and B contracts are being centrally uploaded by the Centres of Expertise).

Therefore, once an organisation has uploaded this file it will for the first time have sight of all the public sector contracts that it is entitled to use. In order to track spend with collaborative and contracted suppliers (BPIs 4 and 5) organisations will be asked to:

2. Confirm which A, B and C1 contracts they actually use in practice (the system will assume that local contracts are being used) and edit the register on a quarterly basis to ensure that it reflects the current use of contracts (for example, if an extension period has been taken, or if a contract has been terminated early).

Common Questions

Supplier IDs are mandatory and should match those in your spend upload.

Contract Value isn't a mandatory field, so don't worry if you're entering details of a framework contract and don't know how the spend will be distributed among the framework suppliers - this field can be left blank, and should only be completed if realistic estimates of breakdown between suppliers is available.

Future Developments

A link is being built so that if an organisation places a contract notice and contract award on Public Contracts Scotland, the contract details will automatically be entered into their contract register on the Hub. Therefore lower the organisational threshold for contracts advertised through the portal, the higher the score for BPI 5(a) will be. OGC and other non-portal related contracts will still have to be manually entered into the contract register when they are adopted.

Profile

This is a web form which asks for data relating to those BPIs that do not depend on spend or contract information (i.e. BPIs 1 - Efficiency, 7&8 - Skills, and 9 - e-procurement).

Where the data has not changed from quarter to quarter, for example skills and staffing levels are unlikely to fluctuate over short periods of time, previous answers can be recalled.

The main bulk of work is in the benefits tracking aspect of the profile - however given the current and future fiscal pressure faced by the public sector, the need to seek and track efficiencies is a crucial part of procurement best practice.

Further Guidance

General guidance is available at:

• Best Practice Indicators
• https://observatory.spikescavell.net/
• 'How do I?' guides (Note that users will need to log into the Hub to access these)
• Any questions regarding process or definitions, call Jennifer Smith on 0141 242 5922.