For too long in government, organiza-tions have rewarded risk aversion over risk management, process over outcomes andstructures over common sense. Nowhereis this more clearly manifest than ingovernment’s procurement processes. Whether it’s a multi-million (billion)pound IT contract at one end of the spec-trum or a year’s supply of paperclips at the other, government rarely escapes theclutches of the procurement process. As you’d imagine procurement in gov-ernment is big. Very big. In Central Gov-ernment in the UK alone, one report at theend of 2008 identied that over £12 billion($18 billion) was spent on service-basedcontracts in 2007-08 in information andcommunications technologies. Withinthis the Government spent around 2% of the total contract cost (£240 million/$350million) in managing those contracts – let alone the cost of procurement in the rst place. I’ve personally been involved in oneIT contract procurement within govern-ment worth around £10m, where a cool£1m was earmarked for the procurement process alone, a process that lasted a yearprior to the implementation itself.This is clearly bonkers, and merely leadsto contracts taking an eternity to completeon, meaning the larger contracts go only tothose big enough and bad enough to cope with the long and drawn out process, withcontracts ending up being unmanage-ably large as long suffering civil servantsbundle as much as possible into onecontract to avoid having to go through the whole painful process again for at least another 10 years. And in a further twist,government tends to then lack the capacity to monitor and manage the implemen-tation of such mega-contracts having “meticulously” procured them, meaning further waste and disappointment downthe track. And even if they did, what they would nd are contracts set in stone andimpenetrable to all but the most expensiveof change controls.No wonder 70% of all UK central govern-ment IT projects are deemed a failure.Government has a uniquely long and drawn-out procurement processes weighed down by red tape and require-ments and an unhealthy addiction to big initiatives over many small innovations.There is a clear need for a more outcomefocused approach to procurement, onethat is faster, more exible and brokendown into a collection of pieces that canbe built up into a whole in an attempt toguarantee more healthy competition, but also one whereby the best people for the job are found, not just the best at respond-ing to tenders.Oddly, help and advice is rarely sought by government from the people on thereceiving end of the process. Too often themarket is prevented from helping to steerthe process, held back from feeding intheir knowledge and expertise as expertsin their eld by rigid processes, often viewed (sometimes rightly) with suspicionbut whose creativity is restricted only by the limits of government ofcials’ imagi-nation and desire to take a ‘risk’ on them.There is also a lack of understanding of what life is like on the other side of thedivide. As a one time contract commis-sioner, I had no real idea how unhelpfulmy actions as a contract commissioner

Time people startedgetting red forbuying IBM.

OK OK I don’t REALLYmean that. Honestly. But as the old maxim goes,“No one gets red forbuying IBM.” Well, per-haps it’s time we shook things up a little . . .

Governmen mus shif ismindse, focusing solely on beterundersanding and ariculaingis problems so ha i can beterlisen o and work wih parnerso craf any number of creaivesoluions.