PROCUREMENT
The government is presumably aware of this and has been talking about shorter procurement cycles of 90 days, yet few SMEs see anything of that. A fast sell through the G-Cloud will still be four or five months.
On top of all this, SMEs are faced with indemnity clauses that are so large they could lead to bankruptcy. The basic requirement for G-Cloud indemnity is £5 million and bidding for other business will require different indemnity clauses.
Although it may sometimes seem that the hurdles are insuperable, SME solutions providers are perfectly suited to working right across government and the public sector. But to make that happen government needs to get a really good idea of where SMEs work best and where they can be profitable and grow, while containing liability.
Government needs to step back and come up with answers to the question: “What problems can we solve with SMEs?” They can only do that by getting a much better idea of the IT services and infrastructure supporting business and delivery in the public sector. When government gets a view of this it will have a better idea of where the real difficulties are. To continue the racecourse analogy – it is not possible to see the entire race if you are standing next to the rails, but if you are up in the TV camera’s cherrypicker, you can see everything.
By using a software platform that gives a view of the entire IT portfolio and its relationship to its own business functions it will become apparent where the problems lie. It might be in punitive contracts, under-performing suppliers, or in low-value, high-cost applications which are delivering little. There might equally be duplication. One department is known to have had more than 20 different payment systems when one would have been enough.
By applying such tools to government departments it will be clear which to address first. IT chiefs will then be able to point SMEs for specific opportunities that they know will be SME-friendly. Unfortunately that is not yet happening. Take-up of what SMEs have to offer is sporadic and sometimes gives the impression that it is done as a box-ticking exercise. What needs to happen is that a government department should be following a business strategy to determine where SMEs would really fit in and letting contracts on that basis. This would allow them to build sustainable businesses rather than encouraging them to bid for every tender, ultimately wasting their time. The government has taken a big step in the right direction by
saying it wants to relax the grip of the large system integrators on the SIAM model service towers that cover different areas such as hardware infrastructure, desktops, applications and user-facing technology within departments – introducing SMEs where appropriate. The theory is that if you “disaggregate” these business services into smaller pieces, the SMEs will be able to break into IT provision. The danger is that government will continue to outsource problems and will just be transferring its difficulties to someone else, asking them to do the best they can, when instead target solutions should be defined and SMEs asked to deliver. Otherwise it may end up with a market place where SMEs are continually going to fail. Government must work out a business strategy so it can have certainty about what it wants to fix with the help of SMEs otherwise it is just throwing SME livelihoods and its budgets at the wall and seeing what sticks.
For more information visit
www.softwareag.com/uk
Balfour Beatty has started work on an £11.6 million mixed-use residential project at Willow Walk in Southwark for Southwark Council
As part of its commitment to supporting the communities in which it works, Balfour Beatty will provide five jobs for non-working Southwark residents, as well as training two workers from the local area to a minimum of NVQ Level 1.
Southwark Council has committed to building 11,000 brand new council homes over the next 30 years. The Willow Walk development is the first to get underway as part of this ambitious plan.
T
he project involves the demolition of existing temporary residential accommodation to be replaced with a four-storey building fronting Willow Walk and Alscot Way. The building will provide temporary accommodation in 54 bedrooms with shared kitchen and communal facilities.
Another new four-storey building on Setchell Road will incorporate 21 council housing units.
Balfour Beatty will also create a new street through the development site, with an open public space, car parking, cycle racks and refuse facilities.
Councillor Fiona Colley, Southwark Council’s cabinet member for regeneration, was on site on Friday to celebrate the start of works. She said: “This scheme, the first of an immense programme of construction, will not only create excellent, high quality council homes for those most in need, it will boost employment and contribute to reinvigorating London’s economy through house building. Southwark Council is a leading authority in regeneration and this is a tangible, proactive step towards fulfilling the promises made to the people of this borough – to ensure they see the full benefits and opportunities of regeneration with new homes, jobs and a better living environment. It is exciting to see the first significant numbers of council homes being built to be managed by Southwark Council for many years.” Balfour Beatty’s Neil Patterson said: “We are delighted to have been given the opportunity, at the start of this ambitious development programme, to work with Southwark Council to provide new quality homes for residents in the Borough”.
Construction is expected to be complete by spring 2015. PUBLIC SECTOR ESTATES MANAGEMENT • MAY 2014 33
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