Procurement Scotland's sourcing approach not only considers the immediate opportunities and challenges of collaboration, but also identifies the importance of developing a coherent approach towards industry changes and technology solutions. Over time, the emergence of converged solutions with greater degrees of service based contracts will lead to an erosion of commodity procurement and will necessitate a greater focus on Technology Solutions. Examples of this include fixed/mobile convergence, managed voice services and hardware, software and implementation services. Procurement Scotland are working with various policy groups, both internally and through groups such as Buying Solutions (formally Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Buying Solutions) and other government bodies, to ensure early involvement in this key transition process and to support the development of new requirements.
Current Status (October 2009)
- An increasing number of organisations are expressing interest in a service bundle/managed service approach. We intend to investigate this to determine whether there is sufficient demand to warrant a national initiative or pathfinder project, and which options could satisfy such a requirement. We recognise the need to take a cohesive approach across Scotland to ensure careful commercial consideration of long term value, and the effective coordinated management of the supply base.
Workshops
Introduction
Last year Procurement Scotland in conjunction with the National Category Forum held a number of regional workshops to ensure a wide range of colleagues were given the opportunity to contribute to a draft strategy for the procurement of telecoms.
The collaborative style of the workshops coupled with the enthusiasm from those who took part resulted in the delivery of highly successful events. One key outcome was a set of comprehensive outputs which have helped shape the development of our first ever national project on fixed telephony which now at ITT stage at the time of this communication.
We are now ready to commence a new phase to address the issue of Technology Solutions. This phase is timely for a number of reasons both internal to Scotland and also looking to the outside, in particular, in terms of forthcoming developments backed by Central Government.
In order to drive this initiative forward, Procurement Scotland hosted a series of collaborative workshops during September and early October 2009. These workshops included an update on developments in the category to date and give organisations the opportunity to fully contribute their ideas to help shape how we drive the various sub-initiatives to conclusion.
The workshops were informal and highly interactive, with clear objectives including;
Data gathering
- Agreeing a generic specification
- Presenting a Technology Solutions Roadmap
- Sharing learning and best practice
- Agreeing how to manage suppliers during procurement activities
- Developing a catalogue of products and services
- Background information on progress to date in the telecoms category can be found at:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/Procurement/npcoe/national-contracts/Telecoms
Workshops
In preparation for the Workshops and to give us some shape around a very complex subject a " Discussion Paper" has been prepared and already reviewed by a range of groups including Procurement Scotland , a pathfinder group, the National Category Forum and others who have indicated strong interest to be involved. Once you register for a Workshop, we will issue you with the relevant papers.Further events
A further event is scheduled in November to discuss outputs and concentrate on the products and services required to progress forward. The event is open to all public sector organisations, If you are interested in attending this event then please respond by email to: procurementtelecoms@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Contact
If you have any questions about Voice based technology solutions, please contact:
Gordon Whittaker by e-mail on Gordon.Whittaker@ scotland.gsi.gov.uk or by telephone on 031 244 0453