View in browser

Keep up to date with conversations that are happening across the public sector that focus on procurement. We welcome your feedback and suggestions for stories to include in upcoming editions.

August 2023

In this newsletter:

• System leadership
• 2023 All-of-Government (AoG) agency satisfaction survey
• Reporting reminders
• Government and leading New Zealand businesses are adopting eInvoicing
• GETSmart with GETS
• Great results from our website review
• Save the date!

System leadership 

On 31 July 2023, Cabinet agreed to the transition from Procurement Functional Leadership to Procurement System Leadership. As a handy reference, agencies can see the mandate in the cabinet paper received earlier this year and we are planning to make this available on our website in September. 

The change from functional to system leadership comes from the Public Service Act. So far, there are system leads for Property, Procurement, Digital, Data, Information Security, Regional Public Services, and Service Transformation.

This change is not a ‘takeover’ of government agencies’ procurement decisions. It represents a balance between maintaining agency autonomy and increased central oversight and powers to improve system wide performance. 

Improving the system is already underway as part of the Procurement for the Future work programme. That includes more data and transparency work to give us better visibility on what and where we are spending. For example, the AoG dashboard went live in July. This dashboard gives agencies insights into procurement practice and spending patterns. These insights support intelligence-led decision-making – which is where the real value is in all of our work.

Data dashboards

There is already greater public value embedded in much of what we do and through government’s collective purchasing power. For example, we are delivering broader outcomes, such as lowering emissions, reducing waste, raising wages, and increasing access to government contracts for Māori owned and New Zealand businesses. System leadership will enable the Government to effectively set the future direction and priorities for government procurement. 

Broader outcomes

2023 All-of-Government (AoG) agency satisfaction survey 

Thanks to everyone who participated in this year's agency satisfaction survey. We appreciate the time you’ve put in completing this survey.

Agency feedback is valuable. It helps us identify areas for improvement, gain a clear understanding of the level of agency satisfaction with AoG contracts and if we are delivering the intended value.

We're currently analysing the results and will publish a report with our findings later in the year.

Reporting reminders

The following reporting is due 1 October 2023.

•    Broader outcomes
•    Progressive procurement policy 

All government procurement mandated agencies must complete this reporting.

Procurement capability index (PCI) reporting is due on 1 November 2023. 

Please note, we will not be collecting Significant Services Contracts data for this reporting round. 

Frameworks, reporting and advice

Spotlight on reporting 

Reporting for electric vehicles
Mandated agencies are required to return their electric vehicles fleet optimisation and transition plan and fleet data collection form by 3 October 2023.

As part of the Carbon Neutral Government Programme (CNGP) all mandated agencies are required to optimise their fleet from 2025.

 
This year, we expect a strong focus on fleet optimisation, as well as electrification. This means thinking about where opportunities may exist to reduce the number of vehicles in your fleet and develop an optimisation strategy alongside your strategy for electrification.

For a small number of agencies reducing the size of your fleet may not be appropriate.

You must submit your 2023 written plan and completed data collection form to the Policy team by 3 October 2023. 

We’re here to help. If you require any help with this reporting, please contact the Motor vehicles team. 

Read more about the minimum requirements for fleet optimisation and transition plans.

Government and leading New Zealand businesses are adopting eInvoicing  

eInvoicing is becoming the norm. 10,000 kiwi businesses have registered to receive eInvoices, including government and some of New Zealand’s biggest organisations. 

eInvoicing is smoother, smarter and safer. It supports small business and productivity in New Zealand.

If you want to know how to get on board with eInvoicing, visit Home|eInvoicing or email einvoicing@mbie.govt.nz to make an appointment with one of our eInvoicing Relationship Managers.

Sign up to keep up with eInvoicing

If you want to stay in front of the eInvoicing curve – sign up here for email updates, seminar/webinar invitations, and tips to get maximum value from eInvoicing.

Sign up today

Find out more about eInvoicing

GETSmart with GETS - Classifying your tenders

Classifying your tender correctly matters. Suppliers set their notification settings based on three categories: UNSPSC product code, geographical location, and agency. 

UNSPSC codes are hierarchical, which means if you select a top-level code notifications will go to suppliers that have selected that code and the codes below that.

Geographical location works differently. When you select a region, notifications go to suppliers that have indicated that they can supply to that region. That means if you select New Zealand as the region for delivery, notifications only go to suppliers that can deliver to all of New Zealand.

So, if you want to reach a lot of suppliers, go broad on UNSPS code and go specific on geographical location.

Do you have a helpful tip about GETS to include in the next instalment of ‘GETSmart with GETS’?
Email the Business systems team.

Great results from our website review

We’ve had great results from the review of information on procurement.govt.nz – now the hard mahi begins.

If you’ve visited procurement.govt.nz in the past 12 months, you’re one of 184,500 people to do so. And any pages you viewed count towards the 1,238,861 page views total. That’s a lot of eyeballs on our website – but is it as good as it can be?

A small but powerful team inside NZGP is taking on the ambitious challenge of reviewing all the information on procurement.govt.nz. The goal is to revise this content to be as clear and useful as possible.

We’ve started by talking to website users about the current state of the site, and what they’d like to see. We visited one of the regular CoLab events, put some questions into the AoG satisfaction survey, and conducted interviews with users in agencies, as well as some suppliers. We also talked to Account Managers, Contract Administrators, and other NZGP staff for feedback. 

A hearty thanks to anyone who’s given feedback so far through any of these channels.  
There was a lot of great input on what we can improve. At a high level, we clearly need to improve the overall navigation so you can find your way around. There’s too much info in general, and too much of it is heavy on jargon and technical language. Specifically, we can make the details on the contract pages a lot more obvious and useful.

We need to provide specific guidance, including (at high level) ‘What is procurement?’, but also around focussed topics, like secondary procurement and how to write a procurement policy.

This is a BIG project! We’re starting now and are excited to progressively improve the information on procurement.govt.nz, through the rest of this year and into 2024.

If you have a burning opinion about the information on the website and it’s not covered by the feedback summary above, it’s not too late to share your thoughts.

You can send us an email if you think something is really missing or needs major improvement. 

Save the date!

Don’t miss our next Knowledge Hour, on managing national security risks in procurement.

Date: Tuesday 29 August
Time: 11.30am to 12.30pm

Come and learn more about this new sub-Rule, which came into effect from 14 August. The presentation will introduce new guidance on managing national security risks in procurement.

There will be time for Q&A at the end of the session.