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

December 2023

Kia tau te aroha mo te wā, best wishes for the season!

Great procurement will increasingly be recognised as a lever to deliver great public service. That’s my prediction for 2024.

We’ll all have our own predictions, and refinements on predictions, as next year progresses, but first an acknowledgement to the procurement community for the great mahi throughout 2023.

The recent Procurement Excellence Forum awards showcased many of those achievements. Finalists and winners alike are delivering more – using data and transparency as a transformative tool, better managing procurement across the whole lifespan of contracts, delivering environmental and social outcomes, and harnessing teamwork.

A personal shoutout to our Ministry of Justice colleagues who took out the Team Award and the Transformation Award with their online tool to help court system users see where their case is in the justice system.

Also, congratulations to the Auckland City Rail Link team. An amazing achievement to win the Forum’s Supreme Award as well as the Social Impact and Environmental Impact Awards.

 
Procurement can play a big role in solving today’s most pressing issues. As we look forward there will be a renewed focus on reducing costs while continuing to deliver excellence. Procurement teams and leaders cannot do this on their own. If we are to get even greater cut-through, we need to work better across our own organisations. That means telling our ‘story’ to CEs, CFOs, Risk and Assurance and Sustainability teams, through to Data and Insight gurus. Coordination is key to more deliberate planning.

New Zealand Government Procurement is here to provide leadership and to support. I hope we are also here to empower and enable greatness across our procurement community.  
Thank you for your work and collegiality in 2023. From everyone at NZGP to you, Meri Kirihimete and we look forward to working together more in 2024.

Noho ora mai,

Laurence Pidcock, General Manager NZGP

Wrapping up our 2023 CoLabs

Throughout 2023, we hosted several design workshops, building on from the success of our 2022 Concept Labs. We had more agencies and suppliers come together and shape Government’s procurement for the future strategy.

This year we:
•    hosted 6 CoLabs in person and 6 online
•    Collaborated on 19 different topics with agencies and suppliers
•    183 people attended in person
•    259 attended online.

Thank you to everyone that participated in our CoLabs and helped make them a hit. Your thoughts, ideas and insights have played an important role in shaping our initial design requirements for a one-stop-shop Procurement Platform, validating and refining ideas for a new sector leadership framework and next generation collaborative contracts.

Read more on insights and reflections from the 2023 CoLabs series and what’s in store for 2024.  

Accessibility in web procurement

Our colleagues at the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) are working on accessibility guidance for web procurement. 

All public service and non-public service agency must meet the NZ Government Web Accessibility Standard. 

This means all websites open to, or available to the public are mandated to meet the Web Accessibility Standard, as well as websites that can only be accessed by staff within the organisation (such as intranets, web-based HR systems, and document management systems).

As the New Zealand Government outsources a large amount of web development work, embedding accessibility into procurement is essential.

DIA have created a handy checklist to help agencies identify where accessibility can be integrated into procurement.

 
Find out more about this accessibility guidance

Government procurement insights released for FY23

We have published the latest government procurement insights for the 2023 financial year. With more agencies and schools using AoG contracts, we saw an increase in spend and money saved.

This enabled more suppliers to deliver goods and services to government agencies.

New Zealand businesses were awarded over 2,300 contracts valued at over $9.75 billion!

See all the latest government procurement insights

New Zealand’s Procurement Excellence Forum awards

Late November saw the annual winners announced in six separate categories and one Supreme winner. If there are takeouts from the 2023 awards, it is that there is an enduring focus on environmental impacts, and the use of data and transparency as a transformative tool. 

Auckland’s City Rail Link (CRL) took out the Supreme Award as well as the Forum’s Social Impact and Environmental Impact Award. Chief Executive, Dr Sean Sweeney said his team, “…Proudly pushed higher the bar for positive social impact and sustainability practices for others to follow.”

 
Ministry of Justice won both the Team Award and the Transformation Award with their online tool to help court system users see where their case is in the justice system. 

The procurement community is only growing in strength through these demonstrations of the value-added and excellence. Congratulations to all.

Rules review 2024

The new calendar year will bring with it a focus on updating the Procurement Rules to reflect new developments in policy and practice and to align procurement practices with the Procurement for the Future vision and strategy.

Early soundings have confirmed that there are a broad range of matters to consider in this review and on which to engage with agencies and other stakeholders. 

The starting point for engagement will be open forum(s) where we will seek views on nominated topics, as well as provide opportunities for general comments and suggestions. Depending on what emerges, we are likely to need to engage in subsequent targeted conversations or workshops on specific topics which will be set up as needed.

These engagements will collectively inform proposed amendments to the Rules. At this stage, there will be formal consultation on the proposed Rules changes before submission to Cabinet for approval.

For all NZGP work in 2024, there will be a renewed focus on reducing costs while continuing to deliver great outcomes. Specifically, we will be testing whether current policies align with the new government’s and incorporate this into the Rules Review engagement.

Our aim is to have modern, fit for purpose Government Procurement Rules that support and encourage good procurement practices. This multi-phase engagement approach will provide the information needed to deliver this.

Look out for further news in 2024 or contact Karen.English@MBIE.govt.nz.

Supplier Management Summit - Wellington February 2024

A summit focusing on making your suppliers a critical part of your business will be held in Wellington next year.

It is widely acknowledged that we need to better understand which suppliers are government strategic suppliers – and how we can best coordinate and manage these relationships.  It is equally true that the perception of procurement is challenging more siloed approaches to organisational structures and how we operate within them.

The summit ‘Enhancing the Extended Enterprise' will bring procurement leaders together to collaborate and make valuable connections. It will also be useful for those executives and managers working adjacent to the procurement function to attend to understand how they might hope to receive a different service from their procurement teams.

The summit will be run by State of Flux who helped NZGP produce the Supplier management toolkit and guidance for leader's toolkit.

The toolkit has become a go-to resource for programme managers to set up and run a supplier management programme within their agency – regardless of where they are on their supplier relationship management journey and adaptable to individual situations. State of Flux recently published research underlying the importance of SRM and procurement practice maturity.

2023 SRM research report - State of Flux

Delivery, Finance, Risk, IT, Audit and Corporate functions are all vital linkages for procurement teams and we should all be encouraging these colleagues to attend.

As we look forward, there will be a renewed focus on delivering value, alongside delivery of great outcomes, through our suppliers while reaping the cross-cutting benefits of a maturing procurement function.

•            When: Thursday, February 22nd 2024
•            Time: 08:30 am - 12:00 pm (NZDT)
•            Where: Asteron Building Level 5/55 Featherston Street, Pipitea, Wellington

For more information, email enquiries@stateofflux.co.uk.

GETSmart - with GETS 

We've had a busy year on GETS! 
 
Across government, we posted 3,016 open tenders (and counting…). Of these tenders, 1,131 tenders opened at 9:00am and 1,300 closed at 5:00pm.
 
The most popular date to post tenders was the 20th of March. 29 tenders were advertised on this busy Monday.
 
Our biggest growth category was UNSPSC code 94000000 - Organizations and Clubs, an increase of 376% from FY 22 to FY 23. 
 
You can find more GETS statistics in the GETS dashboard here.

Christmas
The Christmas season is nearly upon us! Please consider this when publishing your tender, or if it can be delayed until the New Year. 

If you’re unable to delay the release of your tender, we recommend you allow additional time for respondents. 

The GETS help desk will be closed from 3:00pm 22 December 2023 until 8:30am 3 January 2024.