State Sector Performance - Vendor Forum

Published 2 Oct 2009
Page updated 19 Oct 2009

The Treasury has released the speech notes and presentation slides delivered by Peter Mersi, Deputy Secretary, State Sector Performance Group at the 2009 Vendor Forum at the Treasury on 2 October 2009.

Introduction

Good Morning and welcome to today’s information session

My name is Peter Mersi, and I am the Deputy Secretary responsible for the State Sector Performance Group.

Better Public Services

As I am sure everyone in this room is fully aware, creating better, smarter public services is one of the Government’s six economic policy drivers.

In this year’s Budget Treasury forecast that the Crown's expenses will exceed its revenues for the next decade.

Exploring opportunities to improve efficiencies in the administration and support services of the state sector is one part of the Government’s wider commitment to free-up resources for priority frontline services within this very constrained fiscal environment.

The evidence from the private sector and from other jurisdictions indicates that it is possible to improve the quality, and reduce the cost, of administrative and support services through common processes and systems and by leveraging knowledge and service volumes through such things as shared services centres and centres of expertise.

Today’s information session is the second in a series of fora intended to outline our priorities, requirements and the broad timeline of opportunities that may be of interest to you.

Before I hand over to the Team, I would like to briefly address some of the issues that were raised at last week’s forum.

Three Issues

1)  Single contract vs multiple contracts

At last week’s forum it was indicated that the Treasury would prefer to have a single contract for such things as a benchmarking deliverable or business case deliverable.

This preference is based on:

• Needing consistency in analysis and problem-solving.
• Reducing the complexity and risk associated with having multiple contracts with individual vendors for one or more conceptually integrated deliverables.

We cannot, of course, offer advice about how any one of you could or should conduct your business, but I understand that it is common practice for smaller and mid-sized vendors to leverage their collective expertise to provide clients with comprehensive and cohesive solutions under a single contract arrangement.

Treasury’s primary interest is in securing services that meet its requirements and timelines, and the Treasury is neutral on whether those services are provided by a single vendor or a consortium of vendors operating under one contract.

I want to emphasize that briefing vendors early in this process is intended to encourage vendors, regardless of their size, to have an opportunity to compete for work that might arise out of this process.

2)  New Zealand Vendors vs International Vendors

A question was raised at last week’s forum about supporting NZ vendors. As you all know, the New Zealand government market is open and competitive. Government procurement policy does not allow for discrimination against suppliers on the basis of where they are based or who owns them.

Procurement guidelines require Crown purchasers of services to be able to show that they have not denied full, fair and reasonable opportunity to suppliers to compete, including domestic suppliers.  We take these requirements seriously and will be running an open and fair tender process.

3)  Services we may contract for now vs services that may be required in the future

Our immediate interest is in contracting for services to:

• Benchmark administrative and support services.
• Develop a business case providing options for reducing the cost and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of these services.

As we look at our current levels of performance and opportunities for improvement, we may conclude that the best business decision is to continue to provide many of these services in-house with our existing technology, and we may conclude otherwise.

Until we have the information and analysis to support a specific process or technology decision, we don’t know what products and services we may purchase.  I understand we have some IT vendors and BPO vendors here.  I am glad you have come to learn about our needs and perhaps share your insights, but we are some distance away from understanding whether or not we will tender for the products and services you offer.

Conclusion

I would like to conclude by saying how pleased I am that vendors have engaged so enthusiastically in this process. These meetings are the first of what is expected to be series, and I look forward to working constructively with vendors as we define our projects.

Treasury hopes to benefit from your early technical input as we frame, scope, and cost our projects.  We hope that you as vendors benefit from early and open information about our needs as you decide how to shape your bid, or indeed whether or not to bid.

Thank you very much for coming here today.  We have received a lot of positive feedback from vendors on last week’s forum.  I hope you will find it useful and that you consider participating in future events relevant to your businesses.