Transcript
John Sorrell
Good afternoon. I’m John Sorrell and welcome to this, to the death slot, first thing after lunch when it’s very hard to drag people away from their food and drink. And I’d like to say a very heartfelt thank you to those of you who have stayed for this session. I… especially since it’s called procurement.
Interesting word, that. I don’t know if you know the definition of procurement but it is – Oxford Dictionary – to obtain by care or effort, take care of, manage – which I quite like. But the problem is – and I’ve always felt a bit suspicious about this word because I don’t know if you know what the definition of a procurer is but for those who don’t, it’s a person who obtains a woman as a prostitute for another person.
And after the conversation this morning about gender and balance, maybe later on in the discussion we’d like to talk about whether this is actually a word we really want to use. I quite like the word commission, personally, rather than procure. But I… This session’s very much about government as a design leader and we had some conversations about that this morning.
But I want to start by, in the spirit of sustainability, I want to recycle a little talk I gave about three weeks ago, which lasts three minutes. I was asked to talk to a group of senior civil servants, permanent secretaries and director-general level, and they were at a conference, interestingly enough, at the Ministry of Defence. And I think that was because there wasn’t any budget to do it at a conference centre. I mean, there’s a problem with doing it at the Ministry of Defence because you need an armed guard to go to the loo, which is slightly interesting.
But they were talking about growth and their conference was about growth because they were being told that on top of everything else, they were now responsible for growth. And I was asked to go along and do three minutes and I was given the brief of trying to liven things up a bit. So I’ll just say to you what I said to them, that this was for – remember this; this is civil servants.
And I haven’t got any slides, I’ve just got some bits of cardboard, in the spirit of designers who use lots of bits of cardboard. And I basically said, I’ve got three minutes and three words. The first word is growth, because that’s what this is about, and you are now responsible for it, on top of everything else. Now, I was looking at the audience. They’re all going…
And I say, the second word is competitiveness and the reason I’m showing you that word is because I know that out there in the tough, hard world we have to be competitive if we’re going to win. And they had quite a strong focus on international trade in this conference and I said, if you’re doing trade anywhere in the world then only one is going to be the cheapest and we certainly, as a country, aren’t going to be the people who can put more bodies in the room to sort things out so how on Earth are we going to be really competitive and win? And don’t forget, this is now your problem because you’re responsible for it. So I say, well, here’s the third word and it’s the answer.
And I say to them, I know that this word – sorry, I’ll turn it round here as well – this word is not one which you like very much because I’ve worked with government for about 30 years now and I know that civil servants are trained all their lives to be cautious and to avoid risk and mad people like me who come in and talk about creativity are very bad news. And they all nodded!
So I said, I think there’s a huge problem because you’ve been given this huge responsibility and this problem but has anyone given you permission to be creative in the way that you operate and work? And I then said, I just want to give you one quick example of a brilliant piece of government procurement – or I’d rather call it commissioning, which succeeded beyond all expectations.
And I’m going to show you this picture and then I’m going to show a little bit of film and the film’s courtesy of Design Club, which is a lovely organisation who are making films to show kids in schools about designers and brilliant projects to try and encourage the next generation – we talked about this earlier – into careers in the creative industries. Have a look at this.
Voice Over
The Millennium seed bank team said yes to letting us have 66,000 seeds. The key thing was knowing that it, the idea would work. When we’d cast one and we were looking, we could see that they looked good and that this acrylic became really precious and like glass and just thinking, well, if one’s nice, and I kind of want it, what would it be like if there’s actually 66,000 of these really precious things?
So the idea at the end of the expo is to actually give these roads [?] with a seed inside to schools and botanical institutions in China and in the UK so the legacy of the building kind of learns from its nickname, which was a dandelion. So it spreads around the world and it reminds people how sensitive you need to be with nature.
This is our favourite pavilion.
This is the best pavilion.
Yes.
Well, wow, just many wows and think that it’s great!
John Sorrell
I don’t know how many of you really know that story but it’s an extraordinary story which really deserves to be told because it’s a brilliant example of government taking quite a big risk, being creative in its thinking and procuring this extraordinary piece of work by Thomas Hillary, which ended up being given the gold medal at the world expo in Shanghai last year.
And to put that in context, there were 240 countries exhibiting. It was one of the most important events for countries to make a point to China about what they were about, what their identity was, about their abilities to be creative and to win and be presented with a gold medal by the Chinese Premier was just unbelievable. It was one of the cheapest pavilions on the site. I think even Madrid and Hamburg as cities who were there spent more money than we did.
And the risks that the civil servants who were involved in this project took, really trusting this, you know, mad idea, you know. It’s a mad idea, we’re going to have this thing which looks a bit hairy and it’s going to be made of 66,000 Perspex rods with millennium seeds embedded in the end and no, there won’t be any plasma screens. You know, in fact, that was the whole point. Everyone else had plasma screens.
So it was a great example of courage and innovation by the civil servants concerned so it can be done. And it’s important because the Government has an annual procurement bill of £236 billion of our money and I do see them as commissioning things on our behalf and I’d like to see them spend that money wisely, to get value for it, but to spend it in ways which are going to enhance the quality of life of everyone in this country and improve the way we’re seen by the world.
So, to get on with the session, a few questions; if government is to use the power of public procurement to stimulate growth by innovation, how is it going to do this? How can it encourage civil servants to be more creative? And how will government become better at articulating its demands to providers and how can design drive innovation in the public sector? That’s what we’re here to talk about this afternoon.