State procurement must be centralised, forum told

LOCAL COMPANIES supplying goods and services to bodies across the public service could lose out under new moves to centralise procurement.

The secretary general of the Department of Public Service and Reform Robert Watt told the Institute of Public Administration conference that about €15 billion was spent across the State sector on goods and services annually.

However, he said he was “not convinced about the way we procure goods and services across an organisation of 300,000 people”.

He said there had already been a move towards a common procurement approach in relation to electricity, gas, paper and other basis commodities and that further reforms were envisaged.

Mr Watt said it was now proposed this list be expanded and there would also be an obligation on all public bodies to participate in central contracts set up by national procurement services.

He said at the moment “people can participate if they wish” and that it was envisaged moving towards 100 per cent compliance.

Mr Watt said that bodies would either have to comply with the new procurement arrangements or explain why they did not do so.

This move towards more central procurement would “cause angst and upset to bodies that have existing contracts and deals with local suppliers”. This was unfortunate, he said, but if the public service was going to save money “we have to make difficult decisions”.

Mr Watt also said that the Government was looking at changing data protection legislation to facilitate greater sharing of information on citizens between departments and agencies.

“Citizens give information to one public body which is of great interest to another body but we can’t share, even though the citizen is funding the service and is benefiting from service X and Y but we can’t share the data.”

“We believe the Data Protection Act is going to have to be changed and that is going to involve a much more modern approach to sharing data across the entire system.”

Mr Watt also said it was proposed there would be a greater use of shared services across public service bodies in areas such as human resources, payroll, finance and pensions as well as payments and debt collections He also said there were enormous opportunities to maximise the value of property owned by the public service.