UK.gov outsourcers must prove their 'social value' to win contracts The UK government has revealed plans to rate outsourcers on "social value", require them to publish KPIs and meet higher cybersecurity standards to tackle the fallout caused by the collapse of Carillion. In a speech at the Reform think tank in London today, Minister for the Cabinet Office David Lidington announced measures the …
I agree with the chap in the article who said that we should have such a thing for government itself. They make such broad claims about money and not having it, then producing literally billions from behind the sofa.
They don't understand that it isn't the likes of Carillion the public don't trust, it's the whitehall idiots that do the hiring we don't trust. I hope Carillion have experienced professionals to negotiate their contracts, sadly I cannot hope the same of whitehall.
Whitehall do have professionals, but when their minister tells them to contract out some vital public infrastructure to a private company from a list of one there isn't much you can do.
At least in the old days there was a small group of companies who could compete by offering bigger donations to the party election fund, or more remunerative directorships to ministers - now with all the mergers you have only one UK company able to bid.
...as presented by CAPITA?! As in "they held all them foreigners in detention centres thus keeping us safe, etc"?!
or is it the one about "streamlining the cost base", aka kicking people off their jobs in the UK? Well, they DO provide "social value" by employing people in Eastern Europe and India (while pocketing the difference, thus paying more tax (rotfl), thus providing "social value"!
Social value... did they have a brainstorm at some lower echelons of the Whitehall anterooms?
p.s. how about voting on the "social value" presented by the government. Say, every four years...
The reason why companies like Carillon and Capita exist is that getting a contract with the government, or indeed any large organisation, involves a certain amount of hoop-jumping. The Purchasing dept in any such organisation simply cannot be allowed to make it up as they go along, so they have rules and procedures for evaluating bids and choosing the winner. So far so logical.
However this means that the company most likely to win the business is the one that knows its way around the bid process of the customer, and has also previously spent time and money building a relationship with the people running the process. This doesn't mean anything corrupt; you just have someone visit the prospect with a Powerpoint deck and spend some time listening to the people who will make the decision. Then you can fine-tune your bid to address their personal concerns as well as the formal requirements.
Unfortunately the upshot of all this is that the winners are people who's core competence is generating winning bids, not doing the actual work.
This "social value" thing is just another of these hoops. It will turn into a section in the bid document which reports on the KPIs. The company will previously have considered what KPIs it should have in here, talked informally to customers about what they are looking for, and then put in place a process to generate auditable KPIs with the minimum cost. Nothing dishonest, just careful engineering. Meanwhile a company down the road that might actually do a better job and be more socially responsible doesn't get the job because they haven't previously put in place a process to identify, collect and collate the necessary data.
Currently working for a large government organisation. It takes about two years (!) for a vendor to have a product certified for purchase. This means it is only larger companies who can finance themselves for two years until the first revenues start coming in. The organisation wants to encourage smaller, innovative companies into the market. So far, it is only larger, staid companies showing any interest.
I'd like to suggest an edit: add the word "necessarily" so that it reads "This doesn't *necessarily* mean anything corrupt..."
Some of these companies are corrupt, others have developed a moral blindspot so huge that they are in effect corrupt. For instance, the outsourcer purchasing cladding for Grenfell Tower either actually knew they were contravening the regulations, or they assiduously and deliberately failed to check so as to avoid technical guilt through some kind of plausible deniability. These people belong in prison.
The only changed mentioned in the article which might help to achieve this is the extension of the Freedom of Information act to apply to outsourcers.
That's right. Insist on a small cadre of "safe" suppliers then, when the winner turns out expert at ticksheet diplomacy but crap at business delivery (theirs or yours), tighten your demands until only one is left standing. I wonder who it will be?
We'll probably even learn to remember Crapita fondly.
How much examination and debate is this one likely to have though?
That's why it's a perfect law to slip in a little clause giving police the power to seize all devices that could be used to take rude photos in public or any system that could be used to process images.
Wrap that in a bit of latin, put it in a sub-paragraph on page 432 and you can grab any phone or computer without a warrant.
You can't possibly complain - it's being used to catch perverts. You aren't pro-pervert are you ?
This includes higher standards for ...
I thought standards, reason, logic, science & maths were tools of the patriarchy?
When systems and services are being managed and run by Lesbian Dance Therapy Majors then we will see a repeat on a larger scale than the Equifax fiasco. Aren't the Chinese doing dome thing like this for the whole population? Some sort of Social Credit Score that's meted out by "anonymous" members of the public/community? There ain't no justice like ideologue mob justice eh?
If the screaming, crayon munching morons could avoid burning civilisation down until *AFTER* I have retired I would be extremely grateful. Thank you for your kindness and consideration.
"However, he went on to say that the government needed to build a more diverse marketplace of suppliers"
Yes, they were talking about doing this 5 years ago and still no progress. Unless of course you call (A) no progress, (B) loads more procurement red tape and (C) more bureaucracy that prevent smaller suppliers even getting a look in; actual progress? All that will happen is that the Crapitas and Serco's of the world will just bid for Public works through their rafts of smaller subsidiary companies, and .Gov will conveniently ignore the bit on the ITT or RFP documents that mention that they are part of these larger companies, via a convenient backhander or a vested snout in the proverbial trough...
"key social issues" – such as on the gender pay gap, representation of minority groups and efforts to tackle modern slavery – they will also be given a number of other rules to play by.
So usual government waste and garbage? So not just value for money (i.e. more expensive, worse results) but representing the views of preschoolers up to about the time people get a career. This sounds like a wonderful virtue signalling SJW pile of tripe but I ask when the country elected a left wing gov?
They might be pushing into labours territory and collecting votes abandoned by the old labour/communist party but it is leaving a void to the right (not to mention the libertarian void).
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