The recent Top 200 gathering and a big meeting with suppliers show the way forward on both policies and procurement, says Ian Watmore.

It’s ages since I’ve been to an event at the QEII centre – and then, like London buses, two events came along at once.

The first was the Civil Service Top 200 event – the last under cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell. I’d like to pay tribute to Gus who, as one of his many achievements, began the Top 200 five years ago: the twice-yearly event has fundamentally changed the way in which senior civil service leaders come together to talk about cross-cutting issues.

To set the context, we heard from Office for Budget Responsibility chief Robert Chote and Penny Young, head of the National Centre for Social Research, who set out respectively the global economic and social issues we are facing. The PM told us how impressed he is with our impartiality and professionalism and our progress on deficit reduction through efficiency, whilst stressing the need to concentrate on policy implementation next year. The DPM reinforced these views, emphasising the point that reforms should further social mobility. And the minister for the Cabinet Office set out his vision for a smaller and more capable civil service.

Working with the Institute for Government, the incoming cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood and Sir Bob Kerslake – who is to become the new head of the civil service – led colleagues to celebrate and learn from the many successes already under way, and discussed how the economic and social agenda creates a burning platform for driving forward change in so many different ways.

One of the ways in which I am keen personally to lead change is by enabling people to do their jobs properly. Our IT, infrastructure and corporate policies are such a drag on the creativity and innovation of our civil servants. This is coming up time and again in the Tell Us How initiative, as well as from a Civil Service Live survey which prompted over 1,000 responses. It is clearly an issue that people care passionately about!

In true President Obama style, when asked whether they were up for leading important, practical change, delegates agreed: “Yes we can!” Indeed, we are already creating precedents for change across the civil service; more on this in a future issue of CSW.

The second event at the QEII centre last week brought together over 500 key suppliers to government to discuss how we can continue to drive savings from procurement, conduct procurements in a lean fashion over shorter timeframes, and maximise the economic benefit for UK suppliers and HMG.

We signalled a greater focus on mutualising public services, introducing new business models and a move to commissioning (versus procurement). We also published the first ever ICT and facilities management pipeline, which will give suppliers in these sectors a clearer picture of the future contractual landscape for the rest of this Parliament. We committed to updating this pipeline and to widening the scope of what we publish.

This new conference was well attended by suppliers of all types. It came on top of a successful year in which savings of £800m have been realised since the election through supplier renegotiation, which is a tremendous achievement.

One innovation that has already taken root is that of the crown representative, a single commercial director – usually from a department rather than from ‘the centre’ – acting on behalf of the whole of government.

Another recent success for the government’s desire to do 25 per cent of our business with the small- and medium- sized enterprises (SME) sector came when Yorkshire-based SME Redfern Travel won the government’s domestic travel contract. More results like this will ensure that our reforms will go hand in hand with growth, as we remove barriers to ensure that SMEs can compete on a level playing field with larger suppliers.

For the coming year, we reconfirmed the commercial commitments in the Open Public Services white paper. This will include moving away from a ‘binary choice of delivery’ and working with providers of different kinds in the future – large-scale mutual joint ventures (being pioneered through MyCSP), SMEs, social enterprises and pure staff mutuals. We are currently recruiting a commercial executive director to lead this effort.

In summary, these two events led me to conclude that an enterprising and professional civil service is working better than ever with the coalition, the wider public sector and the private, voluntary and community sectors to deliver efficiency and reform – which have never been more important than in the current climate.

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Written by Ian Watmore