When Edward Leigh, the chair of the Commons' public accounts committee (PAC), tells one of his witnesses, "We are here...not to have a go at you...we are here literally to help you," it's likely to make that witness's heart sink.
Today, the result of that help is clear, in the PAC's scathing report about how central government departments are wasting as much as £300m of their annual £12bn spending on service contracts, because of the poor way they are managing those deals. But it's not just departments that come under fire in the report.
The government's central "enforcer of efficiency", the Office for Government Commerce (OGC), comes out pretty badly and its chief executive, Nigel Smith, who faced Leigh and his colleagues back in January, when they were preparing the report, must be feeling somewhat gloomy.
The PAC says that half of the contracts covered in the National Audit Office's (NAO) survey of major central government contracts have no backup plan for what would happen if a supplier fails to deliver – even though these are big deals, for critical public services.
The OGC is failing to provide good enough guidance on contract management, is failing to train managers in managing big deals once they are signed and is failing to ensure that government departments routinely check their contracts are providing them with good value for money.
Worse, the PAC shreds the OGC view of the need for departments and suppliers to work closely together, something the OGC has tried to encourage, calling many relationships "too cosy".
In January, Smith was staunch in his defence of the OGC approach, saying it's not surprising if financial penalties aren't always applied, because if that's done on a regular basis, it's a sign of a poor relationship.
But suppliers themselves didn't show their appreciation for Smith's view, because 80% of those in the NAO survey says incentives encourage them to perform and that there's nothing wrong with a "slightly combative" but positive relationship.
None of this will be news to Public's readers. At our roundtable last December, senior procurement managers from across government noted that it's more exciting to sign a deal than to be involved in the mundane task of making it work. Things are better in local government, they said, where the life of a deal is seen as a strategic management matter. In the civil service, making a deal is more celebrating than making a deal work.
Central government's management of service contracts: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmpubacc.htm
