The South Australia (SA) Government has announced a new procurement body to centralise and streamline processes.
Under an overhaul of the function, the procurement of construction, goods and services will be brought together to help make tendering for work simpler for local businesses.
This follows recommendations made by the SA Productivity Commission on how to make public procurement more efficient and achieve better value for money.
Treasurer Rob Lucas said: “The Marshall Liberal government is committed to maximising the value to taxpayers from this expenditure while creating a unified and consistent approach to procurement across government that enhances opportunities for local industry and South Australian businesses to be involved.
“Each year, the government spends more than $11bn on purchasing goods, services and construction activities which has a significant positive impact on jobs, business activity and investment in South Australia.”
The new body, within the Department of Treasury and Finance, will replace the State Procurement Board, while the State Procurement Act 2004 will be repealed to create a single new framework bringing together previously separate frameworks.
The SA government has accepted all 60 recommendations made in the SA Productivity Commission’s government procurement inquiry report either in full or partially, including the new framework, increased data analytics and reporting for better accountability and transparency, and improvements to procurement professionals’ capabilities.
Lucas said the report identified “ways to improve value to taxpayers by cutting red tape, simplify and streamline processes and make it easier for local businesses to tender for government work”.
The SA Productivity Commission’s report said: “The state procurement framework is, in practice, a combination of several frameworks that operate separately. This fragmentation is a barrier to a whole of government approach, limiting the prospects of simplifying the system for suppliers, improving the value generated by the state’s procurement spend and achieving other system wide efficiencies.
“As a key plank in addressing this constraint, the Commission recommends establishing Procurement SA with the role of improving the state’s procurement system and being the government’s chief adviser. As such, it would lead and build a profession of highly capable procurement practitioners and lead the task of simplifying the procurement system.”
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