Rebecca Evans MS, Minister for Finance and Local Government
Today the Welsh Government has published the summary findings following a discovery exercise into the establishment of a procurement centre of excellence.
A report ‘Procuring well-being in Wales’ was published by the Future Generations Commissioner (FGC) for Wales, 25 February 2021. One of the key recommendations from this report was to establish a Procurement Centre of Excellence (PCoE).
The, then, Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport also commissioned a procurement expert panel to produce a paper on the development of a Centre of Excellence for Procurement. This paper was submitted 26 February 2021.
We have been working with all of our Welsh public sector stakeholders to understand how best to take both recommendations forward. I really appreciate the comprehensive engagement from the stakeholder community that has also included suppliers and looking at what other countries are doing.
The discovery has made a series of recommendations which include establishing community led governance and running an Alpha phase/pilot to test the PCoE recommendation as a series of initial services in more detail.
The services to be tested are:
- Service 1 - Create the community
- Service 2 - Share Best Practice
- Service 3 - Develop Insight
- Service 4 - Support Training
I have agreed for the Alpha phase/pilot to proceed and a supplier will be procured to run these services in the short term.
Further detail is contained in the summary findings. I hope that you find the findings useful and that they help you understand the journey we are on, how far we have already travelled and what we still have to do. It is available here: