Main Conference

Chair’s Opening Remarks

Opening Keynote: Government Procurement Service – A New Era

• Providing procurement savings for the UK Public Sector as a whole
• Providing a level playing field for SMEs
• Delivering significant, sustainable cost reductions to Government through the centralisation, standardisation and aggregation of spend on common goods and services
• Delivering expert sourcing, category and centralised data management
• Improving service delivery through increased customer focus and commercialism
• Driving the delivery and development of the Government Procurement Service
• Continued delivery of savings
• eEnablement of our operations
• Operational and financial efficiency
• Development and retention of high quality professional staff

Questions and Answers

Better Ways of Working

The possibilities for improving business performance in these tough times have never been greater. Using the latest technology to improve efficiency, motivate people and deliver a faster service can help you become a better business. Today, where you work isn’t as important as how easily, quickly and cost-effectively you do it. And enabling more flexible, mobile working environments are becoming increasingly cost effective and simple to create.

Crown Representatives and the Crown Contracting Prospectus

• Role of the Crown Representatives
• The Government as a single customer
• Pipeline of future contracting opportunities over this Parliament

The Future of Public Service Delivery

• Setting out a better way to deliver public services
• Delivering economic prosperity via private sector involvement and market de-regulation
• Reforming the public sector and extending choice leading to high quality services that can be made available for everyone
• Ensuring the achievement of value for money across public services

Presentation by Jenny Grey, Director of Policy Communications for the combined Number 10 / Cabinet Office Directorate & Acting Executive Director for Government Communication (Confirmed)

In this presentation, Jenny Grey will cover how she is ensuring the successful planning and delivery of cross government campaigns and co-ordination.

Questions and Answers

Break and Exhibition Visit

Special Keynote: Future of NHS Informatics

• Building a new way of working which helps patients and clinicians gain the best value for public money
• Supporting the NHS to deliver better, safer care to patients through improved IT systems and services
• Providing the NHS with the insight it needs to take the right decisions in sourcing systems in the future
• Sending a clear signal to the supplier community that the NHS IT market is open for business
• Developing a vibrant marketplace for healthcare IT

Questions and Answers

The Public Finances

• Where we are and what the government is doing
• The scale of the public spending squeeze
• The longer term context

Commissioning, Procurement and Innovation

• What is wrong with commissioning?
• How are we responding? – a procurement orthodoxy
• A  vision for commissioning public services
• From vision to reality – why is making it happen so difficult?
• What could government usefully do? – the Open Public Service Reform White Paper

Working Together to Achieve Value

• The procurement process behind the work programme
• Working with our suppliers to do more
• Encouraging the market to propose, perform and deliver
• Opening up more public sector contracts to small businesses
• Setting a new gold standard against which all future public sector procurements will be judged
• Being the pioneers of procurement excellence in the public sector

Questions and Answers

Lunch and Exhibition Visit

Afternoon Chair’s Opening Remarks

Keynote Address: The Local Government Efficiency Challenge

• Increasing efficiency and transparency on a local authority level
• Delivering services in a streamlined and efficient way
• Working with local authorities and public bodies to maintain vital front line services whilst making savings

Questions and Answers with Minister

Improving efficiency in local government through smarter procurement and asset management

• Reducing the local government asset base by a quarter
• Efficient leverage through collaboration with other local bodies, agencies and neighbouring authorities
• Finding new ways to effectively reduce spending without affecting performance or the quality of outcomes
• Developing the adoption of systematic management and leadership to categories of activity focusing on creating greater leverage and cost reduction for what the sector buys

Questions & Answers

Break and Exhibition Visit

A Changing Government ICT Landscape

• G-Cloud – a fundamental change in the way Government and the public sector does technology
• Enabling SMEs in particular and cloud providers to more easily get their services across to government through a new cloud framework
• Continuing to remove barriers as part of the Government’s digital agenda, including overcoming security and commercial issues
• Changing the way government buys IT, who they buy it from, how they handle security, how they focus relentlessly on their customers and how all their employees work, not just those in IT
• The ability to buy proven solutions on a pay-as-you-go basis through Cloud computing
• Moving government services to the cloud
• Enabling SMEs to successfully enter the marketing place
• Engaging directly with the most agile forward-thinking suppliers that are in the SME market today
• Delivering more efficient government and better services for citizens through cloud computing

The IT budget: a pot to plunder or an investment to protect? Mutually exclusive options or twin goals you should be demanding?

Delivering more while spending less means having to change the way things are currently done, not just within individual public services but also across organisational boundaries. The Public Services Network (PSN) programme, a unique collaboration between government and industry, is poised to give the public sector a secure internet.  Just as the worldwide web spawned new business models and revolutionised consumer behaviour, can PSN enable a revolution in how public services operate and are delivered?

Building HMRC’s IT strategy- Managing Change in a Challenging Time

• The importance that IT plays in wider transformation across the department
• Managing “the largest job in government IT”
• Leading the double challenge of delivering cost savings from making ourselves more efficient whilst also having to increase our revenue
• HMRC’s Aurora programme – trying to save £161m per year in IT costs, by switching off, resizing and moving IT systems
• Change being driven by budget holders not IT professionals
• A complete transformation of the government personal computing market
• A user-led UK government strategy

Achieving Value for Money across the Public Sector

• Better co-ordination of procurement activities to ensure value for money is secured across the public sector
• Delivering structured cost reduction
• Improving commercial skills in the public sector to improve their ability in the negotiation and management of contracts
• Acting as a more demanding and intelligent customer by harnessing government buying power through concerted tactics and tougher negotiation
• The need for managers to take on greater accountability, be incentivised and be held responsible for maximising value for money
• Seeking better deals for the public in the current economic climate
• Developing efficiency plans

Improving Government’s Record on Project Delivery

• Delivering value for money across a major project
• Overseeing and directing the effective management of all large-scale projects that are funded and delivered by central government
• Telling departments if there is a need for additional assurance
• Arranging extra support for a project
• Taking disputes or problems to ministers
• Running an assurance process at key stages to assess whether major projects are on course to deliver on time, within budget and to the required quality
• Improving departmental skills in the management of projects and programme

Questions and Answers & Close of Conference

The conference is free to attend and all sessions are available on a first come, first serve basis.