Commercial

A new Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is to become fully operational in April 2014, under plans to merge the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission.

The government is looking to establish joint ventures so that some of its intellectual property businesses can enter international markets, Stephen Kelly, government’s new chief operating officer, has told CSW.

The Ministry of Defence’s procurement arm – Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) – can only continue to offer current levels of service for the department if some jobs are outsourced, its boss Bernard Gray, chief of defence materiel, told the Commons’ Defence Committee yesterday.

Never mind the NAO; ministers too hate a risk gone wrong

The Department for Transport’s decision to publicly suspend three officials last month when it reopened bidding for the West Coast Mainline franchise was “immoral”, former Labour transport secretary Lord Adonis said last week.

Efforts by the Treasury to incorporate long-term analyses into its budgetary calculations are being hampered by the political calculations of successive governments, Nick Macpherson, permanent secretary at HM Treasury, said on Monday.

The development of new ICT procurement frameworks by the Government Procurement Service (GPS) has been “paused” while a review is undertaken to ensure they’re offering the best value for money.

Five government departments will be required to provide clearer guidance and complaints procedures for staff keen to set up public service mutuals, under new proposals designed to maintain the momentum behind the government’s public service reform agenda.

Just 16 per cent of civil servants are interested in exploring the idea of launching a ‘mutual’ organisation, with 69 per cent dismissing the idea, a CSW survey has found.

Fraud is widespread at government contractors A4e and Working Links, their former head of audit, Eddie Hutchinson, has said.

Three ground-breaking ‘carbon compacts’ have been signed, bringing together the spending power of departments and private businesses in a bid to push suppliers into cutting carbon emissions.

Unacceptable IT is "pervasive" across government and some people in the profession don't have the capability to bring about the changes required, the retiring head of the government's G-Cloud programme, Chris Chant, has written in a blog post on a government website.

The government wants to legislate to give citizens a right to choose their public service provider, it said last month in an update to its Open Public Services white paper.

Last July, I helped to launch the Open Public Services white paper alongside the prime minister. The CBI welcomed the government’s pledge to open up every public service to new providers, but warned that the government would have to be bold to make its ambition a reality.

The Cabinet Office is to run a central academy to train civil servants and local government employees in commissioning and procurement, the department has told CSW.

Ten councils have signed up to a new payment-by-results scheme that rewards councils for helping ‘troubled families’ by sharing with them the savings created as the demands on social services, criminal justice and other services decline.

Central guidance and oversight of government procurement cards (GPCs) is inadequate and inconsistent, increasing the risks of wasteful spending, the National Audit Office (NAO) said in a report last week.

The launch of the Cabinet Office’s flagship public sector mutual, My Civil Service Pension (MyCSP), has been repeatedly delayed and it will now have to spin out from the public sector in the next financial year, CSW has learned.

Departments have spent billions on shared services schemes but have failed to reap the benefits, with projects often over-budget and over-customised, the National Audit Office says in a report today.

Robert Devereux has defended plans to charge single parents for work carried out by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC).

Public service targets still have a role to play in improving outcomes, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Justice has said.