22nd April 2009

Government Opportunities
Scottish SME Procurement Conference
22 April 2009

 I presented yesterday at this years Scottish SME Procurement Conference organised by BiP.  I was asked to cover public Procurement Reform in Scotland.  Initial feedback from BiP confirms that the day went down very well with suppliers.  For the first time we were able to explain how much public sector spend (just under 50%) was contracted with SMEs as prime contractors.  I explained that we will soon have 07/08 spend and in the autumn 08/09 spend.  I am sure that this information will help encourage SMEs to compete and went some way to generate a positive atmosphere this year.  I would like to thank all the central government organisations who have worked with us to complete the Best Practice Indicators, reporting spend and other important performance information.

There were a range of interesting presentations from different parts of the public sector, the private sector, BiP, BusinessClub Scotland and the Small Business Consortium.  The purchasing community and SMEs are increasingly engaged on the programme to reduce barriers to participating in government business and further work in CGCoPE and across the sectors will be undertaken, such as simplifying documentation, producing a low-value procurement toolkit and developing the 'Quick-Quote' facility in the Public Contracts Scotland portal.

Barry Graham, Head of CGCoPE