Hi, I am Stacia Copple. I am a digital procurement specialist. I also love communities of practice (I’ll blog about that another time).

Hi, I am Stacia Copple and over the last 2 and a bit years I have been co-hosting the public sector Buying Digital Community of Practice (CoP) with the team at the Crown Commercial Service (CCS). I wanted to reflect on what I have personally learnt after co-hosting some of the face-to-face and virtual meet-ups.

G Cloud 12 - well done CCS and Digital Marketplace I’m Alexander Keenes. I was recently given the task of applying to G Cloud 12. A stressful prospect, having never done anything like this before. I wanted to share my views.

Applying to G Cloud - simple and hassle freeApplying to G Cloud 12 was daunting. I had never applied to a public sector framework agreement before, let alone a Crown Commercial Service (CCS) one. And to be honest, I was a bit apprehensive about how tedious this was going to be. I feared I would need to jump through lots of hoops and complete lots of paperwork.

Expiry date - the key considerations for managing the transition

Hi, I am Stacia Copple. I am a digital procurement specialist. I also love communities of practice (I’ll blog about that another time). 

I’ve worked with many well experienced IT procurement specialists, some who think buying Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) is the same as buying IT. There are some similarities but equally there are differences. 

DDaT is an emerging category. I want to explain to you why by listing the main products and services that I have purchased and contract managed for digital delivery teams and how these are different from IT.

Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) are sometimes used synonymously but they are fundamentally different and it is important to understand how and why.

Is the government making appropriate preparations for PFI expiry?

The NAO have recently published a report that provides information on managing PFI contracts as they come to an end and considers whether government is making appropriate preparations to manage the expiry of PFI contracts.

In this blog post we provide commentary on the key findings based on our experience of leading DWP’s successful exit of the first large-scale UK PFI to expire. We will discuss the recommendations in a future blog.

What are Private Finance Initiative Contracts?
Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts are those where public sector projects are financed and run by the private sector. They were introduced in the UK in the 1990s to design, construct, finance and maintain infrastructure such as hospitals, roads, schools, prisons, waste management and office accommodation. Typically the contracts have an operational length of 20 to 30 years with the public sector making annual repayments to private sector contractors.

Some organisations are well on their way. Many are at the beginning of their journey. Most are still working out what to do and how to do it.

Procurement, in too many important places, continues to be unfairly perceived as a hindrance rather than help. Organisations want to work in an agile way but often procurement is an afterthought. For years people have either ignored it or forgot about it. Equally, the procurement profession, for whatever reason, continues to struggle to make its voice heard. 

An Introduction to Procuring Digital Services

Procurement can be bureaucratic, slow and painful.

Some procurement users, both internal staff and bidding companies, will try and navigate around the many processes and procedures often reverting to a position of hacking to deliver what they need.