Chairman's Blog - Colin Cram, Former Chief Executive, North West Centre of Excellence & Director, Marc1

'UK public sector procurement is worth some £175bn a year. This is 10 times as big as Tesco's. Public procurers can move markets and affect behaviours. To manage this effectively and to extract the best value, we need to pull together, acting jointly and collaboratively. Procurement makes up one third of public sector expenditure and its management is central to the efficiency agenda and delivery of public services. Centralised procurement for government departments is a must. Organisations must make as much use as possible of buying agencies.

Other key messages included the importance of: strong and effective leadership within organisations; sustainability as a strategy, not to be tackled simply on a case by case basis; spending knowledge and its effective use, including the need to look forward rather than rely on the past; the capability to address innovation through joint procurement; category management, which will be done increasingly on behalf of all the public sector; aligning procurement's goals to those of the organisation which it serves; effective customer and supplier engagement.'

Have your say now on issues to emerge from this Public Service Events’ conference:

How should public sector procurement be structured in order to deliver best value to the tax-payer, deliver government policies such as sustainability and innovation and move markets whilst, at the same time, remain engaged with customers?

Information is key to capable procurement. How should the public sector ensure it has suitable and coherent information on procurement spend, suppliers, markets and categories that is available to all and used effectively by all?

What might the impact of much more joint collaborative procurement have on the public sector procurement profession, skills required and the numbers of procurement staff?

Given the authority and resources, what is the one big thing you would do to improve value to the tax-payer?