What are Best Practice Indicators?
Procurement services in the public sector are under pressure to deliver performance improvements and to achieve financial savings through more efficient and coordinated service delivery.
Through the Scottish Procurement Information Hub we now have detailed spending and supplier data from a significant number of high spending public sector organisations in Scotland. In line with John Swinney, Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth's wishes, this data is now being used to:
· identify clear opportunities for regional, sectoral and national collaboration
· negotiate a better deal through collective public spending
· eliminate duplication of effort and price variations caused by disconnected contracting arrangements.
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 earlier this year by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth. They 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.
How do I report my BPIs?
To make reporting and analysing the BPIs as easy as possible a web-based reporting tool has been developed which is free to all publicly funded bodies. Using this tool, organisations will be able to track their progress against the indicators over time, within their sector and region, and against the national average. They will also be able to use it to make strategic decisions about how to deliver improvements.
Timing
All parts of the public sector except Higher/Further Education (HE/FE) should aim to complete their first (baseline) report by the end of July 08. HE/FE Sector baseline reports are due in September 08. Reporting will then be required on a quarterly basis and will be used to brief the Delivery Group and Public Procurement Reform Board.
BPI Data
There are 9 BPIs and, for organisations that have spend data on the Hub, the data is collected in 4 ways using the following templates:
1. Profile - Template 1 - (BPIs 1/7/8/9)
The Profile contains data on Efficiency Savings, Skills, and E-procurement - the only BPIs that are not calculated automatically by the Hub from spend and contract data. You can therefore enter profile information even if your 06/07 annual spend data is not published on the Hub. You can also upload the parts of the profile you know and save them on the Hub while you gather the rest.
2. Refresh Lite - Template 2 - (BPIs 4/5a/5b)
The Refresh Lite process ensures that the spend data on the Hub for your organisation is as current as possible. Because supplier data in the refresh lite upload is matched against the supplier information from the last full annual refresh - i.e. your 06/07 annual spend data, Refresh Lite cannot be uploaded until 06/07 annual spend data is published on the Hub.
3. Contract Register - Template 3 - (BPIs 4/5a/5b)
Uploading your contract register is dependant on both the 06/07 data and the refresh lite data as the suppliers named as contracted suppliers are matched with the suppliers in both sets of data. It is therefore top priority for those organisations that do not yet have their 06/07 data published to move that process forward - until they do they will not be able to complete a full BPI report.
4. Questionnaire tools - still to be developed with Spikes Cavell therefore is not included in the first reporting phase (BPIs 2&3).
Organisations who do not currently have spend data on the Hub will be able to report the BPIs by logging into the Hub and accessing a separate free text web form to record their results against each BPI. Such organisations will be able to monitor their progress over time and run comparisons with the sectoral and national average, but won't have access to further analytical reports offered by the Hub (since these depend on detailed spend data being available).