The Scottish Government is the devolved government of Scotland. It was formed in 1999 as the Scottish Executive following the 1997 referendum on Scottish devolution.
The Cabinet Office is a department of the UK Government responsible for supporting the prime minister and Cabinet. It is composed of various units that support Cabinet committees and coordinate the delivery of government objectives via other departments. As of December 2021, it had over 10,200 staff, mostly civil servants, some of whom work in Whitehall. Staff working in the Prime Minister's Office are part of the Cabinet Office.
Procurement is the process of locating and agreeing to terms and purchasing goods, services, or other works from an external source, often with the use of a tendering or competitive bidding process. The term may also refer to a contractual obligation to "procure", i.e. to "ensure" that something is done. When a government agency buys goods or services through this practice, it is referred to as government procurement or public procurement.
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) was a UK Government Office established as part of HM Treasury in 2000. It was moved into the Efficiency and Reform Group of the Cabinet Office in 2010, before being closed in 2011.
The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) is the principal set of rules regarding Government procurement in the United States, and is codified at Chapter 1 of Title 48 of the Code of Federal Regulations, 48 CFR 1. It covers many of the contracts issued by the US military and NASA, as well as US civilian federal agencies.
Contract management or contract administration is the management of contracts made with customers, vendors, partners, or employees. Contract management includes negotiating the terms and conditions in contracts and ensuring compliance with the terms and conditions, as well as documenting and agreeing on any changes or amendments that may arise during its implementation or execution. It can be summarized as the process of systematically and efficiently managing contract creation, execution, and analysis for the purpose of maximizing financial and operational performance and minimizing risk.
Government procurement or public procurement is undertaken by the public authorities of the European Union (EU) and its member states in order to award contracts for public works and for the purchase of goods and services in accordance with principles derived from the Treaties of the European Union. Such procurement represents 13.6% of EU GDP as of 2018, and has been the subject of increasing European regulation since the 1970s because of its importance to the European single market.
Government procurement or public procurement is the procurement of goods, services and works on behalf of a public authority, such as a government agency. Amounting to 12 percent of global GDP in 2018, government procurement accounts for a substantial part of the global economy.
Government Secure Intranet (GSi) was a United Kingdom government wide area network, whose main purpose was to enable connected organisations to communicate electronically and securely at low protective marking levels. It was known for the '.gsi.gov.uk' family of domains for government email. Migration away from these domains began in 2019 and will be completed in 2023.
The Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) was a UK government agency providing computer and telecoms support to government departments.
A trading fund is an executive agency, government department or often simply a part of a department, that enables the department to handle its own revenues and expenses separately from overall government finances and more like a business, as opposed to having to obtain funding from the government's legislature and feeding income back into its treasury. A Hong Kong governmental study of trading funds in the UK and Hong Kong describes their nature and purpose as follows:
A trading fund is a financial and accounting framework established by law to enable a government department, or part of a department, to adopt certain accounting and management practices common in the private sector. [The fund] operates on a self-financing basis and does not need to regularly seek funding from the legislature to finance its daily operations after its establishment... the intention [is that such] an institutional change would provide the appropriate flexibility in resource management and nurture a new working culture to improve services in terms of both quality and cost-effectiveness.
The Canadian Commercial Corporation is a Canadian federal Crown corporation mandated to support the growth of international trade by helping Canadian exporters gain access to foreign government procurement markets and by helping government buyers abroad to obtain goods from Canada. The ability to enter into commercial contracts as a Government of Canada entity through CCC is designed to give Canadian exporters the opportunity to mitigate risks associated with foreign procurement and international contracting. Canadian businesses exported $2.92 billion in products and services through CCC contracts during the CCC’s 2020-2021 fiscal year.
Syndicated procurement is a purchasing method whereby a syndicate manager groups together multiple concurrent orders from multiple buyers with intent to reduce the purchase price or facilitate delivery. Similar terms in use are "aggregation" and "collective buying".
The Public Services Network (PSN) is a UK government's high-performance network, which helps public sector organisations work together, reduce duplication and share resources. It unified the provision of network infrastructure across the United Kingdom public sector into an interconnected "network of networks" to increase efficiency and reduce overall public expenditure. It is now a legacy network and public sector organisations are being migrated to using services on the public internet.
The Treasury of New South Wales, branded NSW Treasury, a department of the New South Wales Government, is responsible for state financial management policy and reporting, and providing advice to the government on economic conditions and issues in New South Wales, Australia. NSW Treasury was established in April 1824 and is the oldest continuing government agency in Australia.
The UK Government G-Cloud is an initiative targeted at easing procurement by public-sector bodies in the United Kingdom of commodity information technology services that use cloud computing. The G-Cloud consists of:
The Public Services Act 2012 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act calls for all public sector commissioning to factor in economic, social and environmental well-being in connection with public services contracts. It requires that all public bodies in England and Wales, including Local Authorities, and NHS organisations to consider how the services they commission and procure which are expected to cost more than the thresholds provided for in the Public Contracts Regulations might improve the social, economic and environmental well-being of the area. Third Sector organisations such as Social Enterprise UK pushed for the introduction of the legislation. In early drafts the Bill had a far greater focus on increasing public spending with social enterprises. The final text of the Act is focused on ensuring public spending leverages value in all three recognized domains or pillars of Sustainable Development, or the triple bottom line.
Peppol is a set of specifications for establishing and also the primary implementation of a federated electronic procurement system for use across different jurisdictions. Through Peppol, participant organisations can deliver procurement documents to each other including electronic invoices in machine readable formats, avoiding the labour of data entry.
At around £290 billion every year, public sector procurement accounts for around a third of all public expenditure in the UK. EU-based laws continue to apply to government procurement: procurement is governed by the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, Part 3 of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, and the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations of 2015 and 2016. These regulations implement EU law, which applied in the UK prior to Brexit, and also contain rules known as the "Lord Young Rules" promoting access for small and medium enterprise (SMEs) to public sector contracts, based on Lord Young's Review Growing Your Business, published in 2013.
