The introduction of the new Government Procurement Service (GPS) in 2011 (previously known as Buying Solutions) was an important step for the UK Public Sector after calls to reduce spending across all departments and to implement tighter budgetary controls as well as increase efficiency and the quality of the overall projects.

The recent frameworks let by GPS now start to open up new opportunities for smaller suppliers to enter the tendering process for government contracts, increasing competition and choice for the public sector, subsequently bringing down overall spending.

Sir Philip Green’s ‘Efficiency Review’ published earlier last year highlighted the problem even further saying that the government was not making full use of its buying power. Even though his findings relating to direct supply may be better suited for the retail market, government bodies have done well to take the relevant points and adapt them to their advantage, enabling them to achieve greater savings by working together with SME’s, VARs (value-added resellers) and Solution providers as well as SIs (Systems Integrators) and the vendors direct.

The new approaches open up prospects for new entrants that were previously not eligible to bid for large government contracts. In the past these organisations were able to tender for these large contracts through a consortium – a feat that was considered extremely difficult and lengthy, when one considers the coordination and planning needed to bring the group of suppliers together. The new ‘tower’ based approach now being adopted by some of the large Govt departments changes this ‘old’ way of working, dividing the larger contracts into smaller, more manageable silos of work.

By opening up bidding opportunities to a larger pool of suppliers and increasing the competition, these new approaches tackle the current problems faced by government bodies, particularly in IT service /project delivery. In the current economic climate initiatives such as this are extremely important and are the way forward to more responsible spending and increase opportunities for IT organisations of all shapes and sizes.