Dr Philip Orumwense commercial director and chief procurement officer for technology at Crown Commercial Service (CCS) discusses how CCS can help the public sector with technology procurement, including the G-Cloud 13 agreement
How does CCS help the public sector procure technology solutions?
CCS is the biggest public procurement organisation in the UK. We help customers get the best technology solutions at the best price, from laptops for schools to advanced cloud technology solutions for local authorities to help them with their digital transformation journeys.
We provide access to an unparalleled range of technology products and services, all designed to help public sector organisations run more effectively and cost efficiently.
What is CCS doing to make it easier for customers to use agreements?
We’re constantly developing our commercial agreements to help customers make the best use of technology in the most cost-effective way.
Under the G-Cloud 13 agreement, we’ve introduced improved terms and conditions. For example, greater inclusion for the provision of day rate cloud support services along with introducing a fourth Lot for further competition for cloud support for larger, more complex requirements.
New Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs), negotiated throughout 2021/22 are helping customers get the best technology at the right price. It will now be easier for public sector bodies, no matter how big or small, to get better value for money cloud capabilities and cutting-edge technology.
What is your team working on right now?
We’re bringing to market several new, innovative commercial solutions including our ‘first-of-its-kind’ Big Data and Analytics agreement, which aims to support the public sector to improve data use to drive efficiency and improve services. It has been developed in accordance with the National Data Strategy and will support the requirements of the government and the wider public sector as they continue to use data to innovate.
G-Cloud 13 and Cloud Compute 2 will continue to drive the transformation of cloud, storage and digital and technology professional services throughout the public sector. With a run rate of commercial benefits in excess of £1bn per annum, this presents an opportunity to become one of the foremost technology thought leaders in the UK.
What is your focus for 2022/23?
Our focus remains on leveraging the best value from our existing suite of agreements. We’re continuously looking for opportunities to drive the message of aggregated buying.
We’re also preparing ourselves for the upcoming rules reform and its implementation in 2023. Our key priority is making sure that we understand how we’ll grasp the opportunities so we can bring even more power to our customers’ procurement.
How is CCS improving commercial capability for public sector customers?
The more spend that comes through our agreements, the more money we can generate to re-invest in raising the bar, investing in our own commercial capability and sharing that knowledge and expertise with our customers.
For example, right now we’re working to help our customers continue their digital transformation journeys. We support the cross-government technology code of practice, which is a set of criteria to help the public sector design, build and buy the very latest technology. The code of practice forms the basis of our new guide to digital transformation in local government, which we’ve created to help local authorities improve services for their citizens. We’ve aligned where our technology commercial agreements can support with addressing the key points in the guide.
How is CCS helping customers to make responsible decisions about sustainability and social value?
We’re continuing our work on providing sustainable technology solutions to ensure the government delivers on its commitment to carbon net zero.
Our Crown Hosting agreement provides data centre colocation facilities for the public sector, delivering significant cost savings and sustainability measures. Through this agreement, carbon savings in the region of 99.9 per cent are achieved from efficient hyperscale facilities and ‘Green Electricity’.
We’ll also be engaging with the various procurement policies including how we boost our own and our supply chain partners compliance to the modern slavery statement.
And we’re accelerating our focus on growing our SME spend through our supply chains. Our SME engagement statistics for 21/22 are outstanding (total SME spend for technology through CCS agreements was £1.88 billion, representing 25 per cent of direct spend) but there’s more to do.
