15 April 2010 | Peter Smith and Sue Moffatt

The High Level Working Group Report on Police Value for Money, published in February, builds on the UK government’s policing white paper and gives more detail about how savings of at least £545 million will be achieved by the 43 forces in England and Wales. But will it succeed…?

NO

Peter Smith, director, Procurement excellence

I’ve worked at individual force, regional and national levels, so I understand the challenges. Each force is independent, reporting to a local police authority, not the Home Office or any central body. The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) looks after a range of initiatives, including IT developments and collaborative procurement (such as frameworks for vehicles). But achieving joint working across the service is like herding clever, competitive cats in uniforms.

So my heart sank when I read a particular section of the report. It starts well, identifying spend areas for joint buying, but then we get this: “The champion/challenger model will apply to nationally agreed contracts to ensure that where an alternative to an existing national framework or contract can offer better value for money it can be adopted by the whole service. According to this model, nationally agreed contracts would be champions. Adopting a champion product rather than taking a requirement to the marketplace saves the costs and time of a procurement process. Forces can challenge an existing champion and such challenges, when they are successful, may lead to changes to improve the existing champion for the benefit of the service.”

From what I understand, this process has major flaws. I can’t believe the smart people in police procurement think this is the right approach. It will not deliver standard national agreements with proper compliance.  

Why? It’s a question of commitment both to the process, and the supplier. If the process of getting to a nationally agreed contract is as it should be, all forces should have input, so why would they then be looking to provide a  ‘challenge’ to the existing champion? My assumption is that national agreements won’t have full buy-in upfront from forces.

If suppliers know there is a lack of commitment they will not propose their lowest prices; best value is only obtained when the buyer has a commitment to offer the market. Go to the market and say, “Some forces might buy from this agreement” and contrast the offers you get to those when
you say, “43 forces have committed to this, with guaranteed spend of £10 million a year.” No competition.

Otherwise forces can wait until the “champion” framework agreement is in place, and then say: “I told you the national deal wouldn’t be much cop!” And unsuccessful suppliers will undercut that deal.  
“Buy from us, Suffolk/Durham/Devon”, they’ll say, “and we can give you an even better deal than the champion.” Then a force exerts its right to ‘challenge’ and shows it has an apparently better deal – perhaps 1 per cent cheaper – then what? Does the national programme have to start again for that commodity? Or is everyone supposed to move to the new champion? Or is the current champion supposed to improve its offering? What if they don’t or can’t?

This is a recipe for fudge in a sector that has an opportunity to build on some good existing practice, and make some significant savings.

YES

Sue Moffatt, head of commercial and procurement, NPIA

The concept of champion/challenge, a common process used across government, is detailed in the recent Home Office value for money report, the Association of Chief Police Officers’ (ACPO) procurement strategy and the Policing White Paper. It will be introduced by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) within months and will be used to help police forces and police authorities make decisions on investments in ICT goods and services to ensure they offer value for money.

The ACPO procurement portfolio board
will drive recommendations for savings outlined in the White Paper. This includes, by 2014, £200 million savings from non-IT procurement and a further £200 million through the Information Systems Improvement Strategy, or around 2 per cent
of the service’s third party spend, which is comparable to the private sector.

Historically, force procurement has been a local matter. The role of the NPIA as a single, national police organisation enables the service to achieve better value for money from services that can be shared across the country. But the reality is that forces are not all at the same point in their local contractual arrangements, so champion/challenge will help the service gradually move to a more structured and standardised approach to police ICT procurement over a period of years. This does not mean we cannot achieve best value through the champion/challenge process. Indeed police suppliers, which traditionally are SMEs, are in a different supplier group to the large, global suppliers used by central government.

The mechanism for challenging decisions will be constructive, so that an alternative shown to offer better value to the existing champion can be put forward. If the challenge is successful, it will either cause the existing champion supplier to make improvements or for a new champion to be selected, with a planned transition from the previous champion product at an appropriate point in time.

Compatibility and scalability are two just as important considerations of why a force may wish to challenge an existing solution. Other reasons may be value for money and collaboration regionally or at the national level.

Champion/challenge is the start of a new way of working collaboratively across the police service and one which will, ultimately, enable forces to offer greater value for money in the services they provide the public.