New Zealand Government Procurement needs systems that are intuitive, end-to-end and easy to use, director of enabling services Liz Palmer says.
Around 2500 agencies use NZGP’s current systems which, in a note posted yesterday, Palmer described as dated, not interacting as an ecosystem and unable to cover the full procurement lifecycle.
Such clunky systems and patchy transparency reporting have long been a bugbear for both users and organisations trying to hold government to account for its spending.
Palmer wrote that great data, increased and shared transparency and a roadmap towards automating data availability would all help support a “better and brighter future” for procurement.
Earlier this year NZGP, a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment sub-agency, sought information from vendors of what it called “source to contract” systems that would integrate and transform its fragmented functions. That followed efforts to deliver new tools to effectively patch gaps in current systems.
Palmer wrote that two project briefs involving data and transparency and the digital systems that would lift NZGP’s game had been tested and refined over the last few weeks.
“Across the sector there is wide agreement that good decisions, the evaluation of policies and practices, and public accountability all rely on quality information,” she wrote. “Without this, we are not able to make high quality, strategic choices about government spend, and provide the assurance that policy intentions are being delivered.
“We also need a digital system that will help us simplify the procurement experience and make it easier for government and providers to do business.”
These, however, were long-term ambitions. In the short-term NZGP intended to work with agencies and suppliers to determine what was wanted, how to get all of the necessary data into a data lake and to flesh-out “tangible deliverables”.
“We really want a more complete picture of where government is spending, who it’s spending with and what outcomes are being delivered,” Palmer wrote. “As Minister [Stuart] Nash said recently, this is an oil tanker, not a speed train and so change will be gradual and we will keep shaping and refining our best collective approach.”
