How to save billions through smarter procurement | Warren Smith | Recoding Government

This week we have a special episode! Since Edial is out of office, Onno decided to nerd out with an international guest on what might potentially be one of the biggest opportunities for a more capable & efficient government: procurement.

In 2023 the UK reported saving £3.8 billion pounds of taxpayer money through smarter procurement. In 2024 that number went up to £4.9 billion. I wanted to figure out what the British are doing that is working so well. As it turns out, this is a story decades in the making, and it started with their Government Digital Service (GDS). So I started digging and I found one of the guys who spearheaded reforms there. And he is a blast. His name is Warren Smith.

Warren has been working in procurement for more than two decades and since 2012 he worked for the British Government Digital Service, where was framework manager and later director of its Digital Marketplace. He now works for Posterity Global, where he is director of insight, innovation and impact, and helps organisations reform procurement for positive economic, social, cultural, and environmental impact.

Links mentioned:

* UK 2023 savings (£3.8 billion)

* UK 2024 savings (£4.9 billion)

* Procurement through G-Cloud framework has saved over £2.3 billion since inception

* Expansion of Small and medium enterprises (SME) from 169 to 1261 from 2015 to 2016

* Expansion of SME’s to 7500+ in 2023

* The Technology Code of Practice

* The Service Standard

* Book recommendation: Platformland, Richard Pope

* Book recommendation: The Service Organization, Kate Tarling

* Book recommendation: Digital transformation at Scale, Andrew Greenway