PUBLIC SECTOR SUSTAINABILITY t
ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT
he uK public sector can point to a number of firsts when it comes to adopting innovative technology that promotes cost and sustainability efficiencies.
For example, the G-cloud Procurement programme has a growing, strong and diverse supplier base, is proven and is validating Government’s decision to take a cloud First approach to it procurement. as a result, senior public sector officials in other countries such as canada, new Zealand and australia are all looking closely at how this model might be adopted in their own territories to realise similar improvements. equally, the uK was the first to look at the whole picture when it comes to sustainability through carbon hotspot reporting, with the nHs revealing back in 2008 that 80% of its carbon footprint is outside of buildings and estates and over 60% of it was in procurement. this caused a complete rethink about how to achieve the nHs target of an 80% reduction in carbon Footprint from the 1990 base line. the nHs has subsequently drilled down via its carbon hotspot report that has the potential to deliver billions in savings by reducing the consumption in the hotspot areas. this policy is already paying dividends as the nHs is currently forecast to meet a 10% reduction in its total carbon footprint by 2015, despite the fact that the carbon footprint from building energy use has actually increased by 0.9% since 2007 and is expected to further rise due to an increase in patient activity. the uK higher education sector, led by
HeFce has now carried out this top level analysis and found out that procurement is again the major part of the sector’s carbon footprint. the sector has established an e-marketplace available to all 200 higher education institutions and over 600 colleges. the marketplace is part of a suite of integrated technologies which use artificial intelligence to conduct both a spend analysis and a green analysis, it guarantees both cost and carbon reductions, and flows these through into the existing contract management and marketplace solutions. of course, targeting procurement as an area for sustainability improvements is nothing new; legislative requirements, environmental targets and issues of public perception all demand it. However, traditional approaches have struggled to make these sustainability advances, well, sustainable. For example, the procurement team might choose to focus on one particular area or a consultant may be
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the uK public sector continues to lead the world in developing new systems for cost effective and sustainable cloud-based procurement. ronald Duncan, chairman and cio of cloudbuy reflects on some of the ground-breaking work that originated in the uK and is now being adopted elsewhere. He also outlines how e-procurement and e-invoicing is helping to automate the process of sustainability management.
brought in to conduct an analysis, optimise buying and identify a number of immediate savings. both of these methods help to optimise spending, improve processes and promote short-term improvements for the period that a particular area is under scrutiny. but over time it is inevitable that things will again get progressively worse until such time as there is another manual intervention. if we are to truly adopt a sustainable model of procurement then we must look to e-procurement and e-invoicing platforms that can free up procurement staff from the time-wasting bureaucracy of historic approaches to purchasing, allowing them to constantly improve the quality and efficiency of their sourcing. this is why i see the expected widespread adoption of a new interoperability standard known as Green Xml as a major industry breakthrough. the Green Xml standard and accompanying utilities Xml standard were developed by basDa (the business application software Developers association) and are now receiving international interest as they address the difficult issues of carbon reduction and supply chain traceability. Put simply they enable financial software to be updated to support product-level measurement of carbon footprints and other message types to cater for an organisation’s financial and environmental reporting requirements. this could have many potential applications – from supporting carbon emission trading through to enabling the type of supply chain track and trace that could avoid a repeat of last year’s horsemeat scandal. the standard was recently supported by
matthew Hancock mP, minister of state for skills and enterprise as part of a seminar held by the Department for business to promote the adoption of interoperable e-procurement and e-invoicing networks by the public and private sector. this could save billions and streamline efficiencies within
Public sector sustainability • Volume Volume 4 issue 1
the uK and across europe. For example, the Department of Health aims to save over £7 billion per annum while also reducing its purchases of high carbon items by 20%. the process can be automated thereby generating recurring cost and carbon reductions as part of a programme of continuous improvement. the utilities Xml technology standard is
supported by bis via the technology strategy board, as well as by british Gas, total Gas & Power, eDF, npower and sse, paving the way for billions of pounds of savings through the mass adoption of e-invoicing. For government, it has already been proven that a typical organisation can save approximately £170,000 per year in invoice processing costs alone. as part of efforts to drive sustainability
forward it’s vital that the public sector look at the full picture and not just at the carbon footprint arising from buildings and energy use. every public sector procurement professional should be able to implement a sourcing strategy that supports on-going financial and carbon footprint savings through automation. it is now possible through uK research and development to fully automate the initial analysis so that a detailed picture of the organisations carbon footprint down to the individual sheets of paper is quickly and easily available. after all, it is this advance that can help unlock the next level of savings across the organisations as a whole, from buildings and energy, through to all goods and services. ronald Duncan led the development of
the basDa Green Xml and basDa utilities Xml standards for the software industry. His company cloudbuy created the first Green emarketplace which was launched by the minister for the natural environment richard benyon in october 2010. cloudbuy is now the world’s leading transaction cloud platform being rolled out globally in partnership with Visa.
www.cloudbuy.com
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