Transcript
John Sorrell
Well, three great presentations and now there’s the chance for discussion. I’d especially like to encourage our online audience to join in so not so much questions but maybe points of view or experiences that people have had that they’d like to share with us now.
Yes, sir, and would you wait for the microphones coming over? Here we go.
Audience 1
Hi. Sorry. Is it listening? Yes. Sorry. It’s Augusto [unclear] here from the LOA [?] and the chairman of BDI, British Design and Innovation.
Some cross-fertilisation. When government buys buildings, it buys design and the design goes out to tender. But when it buys services and devices, it doesn’t do that. IT creates written specifications and they go out to tender.
I’ve been designing BT’s CPE, their customer premises equipment, for 20 years. Now, that’s about a third of the devices bought in Britain. Now, BT’s a service company but because its devices are very important to that company, it buys us, we design them and the designs are put out to tender.
So the hubs, for example, that you see are dual-sourced. They’re mechanically engineered and they’re made in two separate places and there’s a certain amount of procurement. So my suggestion or thought to government is, don’t buy to written specifications, which can be misinterpreted and lead to late discoveries that you haven’t got it right, effectively, and consider employing designers and buying design. So create specifications and put those specifications out to procurement and then you can do all kinds of stuff. You can dual-source, you can build processes around them, etc.
So that’s my suggestion for the day.
John Sorrell
I guess, I was looking at you here, Barry, and you were nodding and then you were shaking your head. So what’s your… Can we bring the mic down here? Oh, no, yours is probably working, actually.
BQ No, I agree with what’s been said. It’s about the client with the resource not over-specifying and, in fact, there is a tendency – well, most of what I was saying was, we should minimise our tendency to over-specify and give more space for the service provider, multiple inputs that Tom spoke about.
John Sorrell
Thank you. Jeremy Myerson.
Jeremy Myerson
I want to just pick up on what Bryn Jones was talking about, about the NHS and the NHS being too large and having no standardisation. And Lord Darzi recently said that the NHS was great at invention and lots of people within the NHS are suggesting new devices and products and environments, but was rotten at diffusion and adoption.
And we’ve got a project at the Royal College of Art – I’m based there – and we are redesigning the standard ambulance, except there is no standard ambulance. Every local area health authority is commissioning a different ambulance. There’s no national specification and it’s crazy that good practise and great product design and good environmental design in one area is not being adopted in other areas.
So people are constantly repeating the same mistakes and I think that the current climate, where things like the National Patient Safety Agency have actually been a national body trying to spread good practise, has actually been abolished by the Government, everything is running in the wrong direction if we’re going to have higher national design standards in our major public services.
John Sorrell
Thank you for that. Anyone like to add to that? Oh, there’s an online question. Let’s go to that. I’d like to really encourage people to give us their questions.
Audience 2
Well, the question online is about whether failure’s too politicised within local government procurement.
John Sorrell
Well, failure, that’s a subject, isn’t it? I mean, talking to Jony Ive earlier and indeed, he said this while he was on stage; if you’re not failing while you’re innovating, you’re probably not innovating.
But as I said in my, with my pieces of cardboard, there is an issue, I believe, with people who are taught all their lives to avoid risk and where failure may actually really limit their advancement and may, to put it bluntly, affect their pension at the end of the day. So isn’t this a question of culture? And perhaps I could put that to you. Anyone like to take that up? Yes, please. The microphone’s coming.
Michael Thompson
Hello. Michael Thompson, Design Connect. I think failure’s a very interesting word. I was interested, John, when you said earlier, well, actually, you prefer the word commissioning to procurement and I think that’s a very interesting shift in the concept of what procurement might actually mean or what that could be in the future.
If you think of the historicity of the word commissioning, it’s very positive, it’s very supportive and it’s very creative. And I think the word failure, equally, is something that we should re-address, not only in our companies but in our schools as well, for example, where people are told and taught, through an exams system that has made the mistake of confusing assessment with measurement, that failure is actually a learning point.
And I think that’s what Jony was talking about this morning, is that that learning point is where the learning takes place, when something fails. And yet we have generations of children going through school who are told that to fail is a mistake. I think we need to do something about this in the way that we use language in our schools and in our education system.
John Sorrell
I couldn’t agree more. Yes, please. Here first and then I’ll come to you, John. Can you come to the mic?
Audience 3
This is a very tiny point but just following on on Michael’s point – I’m Laura Haynes [?] of Appetite and I’m sitting on the Design Commission looking at education particularly.
Coming from the other side of the pond, where we’re often credited with being able to innovate because we’re willing to take risks, children never fail at school and you’re taught from a very early age that it’s actually about the progress of learning that’s important, and re-learning that’s important, rather than passing or failing as you go along.
John Sorrell
Thank you. Just over there, please. John, you begin.
John Newbiggin
John Newbiggin, chair of Creative England. Talking to people who provide services for the health service and for education in particular, it’s clear that the procurement processes are unbelievably complicated and militate against small companies ever getting the chance to bid.
And talking to some local authorities, I realise that also there is no incentive on a – and Barry, you might want to comment on this – there’s no incentive for a local authority to make the procurement process so simple that every little kind of lunatic, home-grown band decides to pitch in and pitch for public services.
So there’s a kind of automatic tension there but it does seem to me that perhaps one of the things the Design Council could be thinking about is starting off with the design of the procurement process at both local and national level to try and come up with some routes that are simpler and more open and do encourage small, creative businesses that, at the moment, feel they’re shut out of the game to have a crack, and encourage local authorities to invite them to have a crack.
John Sorrell
There’s a challenge for you, David. And I remember at a meeting last year at London Design Forum, Wayne Hemingway made the point that most small design companies never do government work because they can’t fill in forms. Michael.
Michael Bichard
I mean, I just think people are being so polite, really, because I think this is a complete disaster area and has been for years. And we talk about it and nothing much happens. I mean, actually, there are very few people in government who understand commissioning at all. I mean, it’s not a route to the top in government, never has been any more than kind of project management has. So why should you develop the skills? So there aren’t many people who know how to do it.
Secondly, the processes are unbelievably bureaucratic. I mean, I’ve worked on the other side, of course, since I left and find it almost impossible, if you’re running, say, a small consultancy, to break into the magic circle of PwC, KPMG and the rest of them, who carry on producing the same tired solutions but keep getting the contracts because they’re the only ones who can afford it! They’re the only ones who can afford to get involved in this unbelievably bureaucratic process.
And then on top of all of that, I think Barry would agree with me, there’s been a cultural issue where departments and local authorities tend to purchase on their own. And I don’t know whether it’s changed, Barry, but I never quite understand why, in its determination to stand apart from every other public service, the library service has not been able, on a national level, to procure more effectively together.
I mean, there’s a big debate going on at the moment about how awful it is we’re having to close libraries. I’d like to see some of our libraries having taken a few initiatives earlier to commission services a bit more innovatively. You put all that together, and it’s not an attractive picture.
Now, the Government, the coalition Government – I should make clear, I’m a cross-bencher so I don’t have a political view on this – I thought, were going to get to grips with this as one of their first priorities and I don’t see much evidence of it.
John Sorrell
Yes, please.
Audience 4
Well, I’m a county councillor in Worcestershire and have been really fascinated to hear the presentations. I was interested in the comment about government in beta but it’s good to hear that we can sort of, you know, innovate and move more quickly but I equally think that we have to think beyond the term of a government.
And one of the initiatives that we were looking at in Worcestershire was this total place initiative that was being looked at. And when you start to look at the numbers of agencies that are, let’s say, take your social care example, working with families and the duplication we have in Worcestershire; we’ve got about four layers of government with parish councils, district councils, town councils and county councils.
So even there, there’s huge duplication and additional cost. And I don’t hear anybody talking about those areas of waste but we’re all talking about savings so I just wondered.
John Sorrell
Thank you very much. Now, I’ve got three people, three points to make. First of all, at the back and then Deborah and then Stuart, in that order. And then we have tea.
Lucky Kimble
Lucy Kimble, Said Business School and Taylor Hague [?]. I’ve been interested to notice in my, having moved to consultancy in the last few months where we ran workshops with, mostly in the public sector and including social workers particularly around high-demand families, for example. And the social workers and assistant directors and sort of senior people say, yes, yes, we put the citizen at the centre!
So some of the language which we might say has come from design, they think is already in their organisational routines and practises. I think we would say, from design, that it isn’t yet but certainly the language of being citizen-centred is there.
So I wonder how we might go beyond just the lip service or the language of citizen-centredness and actually look at how organisations do their work, particularly service organisations.
John Sorrell
Thank you. Good question. Deborah Dawton.
Deborah Dawton
Deborah Dawton from the DBA. I’ve got some good news for everybody. We carried out a review in government of government procurement two years ago. It’s taken us this long to find a government department to work with to implement some of those recommendations and we’re going to be doing that with the GMA and TFL to look at how we can inculcate best practise, design procurement into their processes with their procurement teams.
And I’m convinced that once we’ve done it with one, it will follow through with others and that will open up the opportunity for small businesses to tender for public sector work.
John Sorrell
Thank you. Stuart Lipton.
Stuart Lipton
I’d like to respond to the point about total place. I am currently chairing the City Finance Commission and one of our recommendations to the Government has been that total place, or the single pot – now, I don’t suppose anybody really understands what these words mean but just – forgive me, John – a minute on what they do mean.
So after 1947 the welfare state was produced. Prior to ‘47, counties, cities looked after themselves. The Government dealt with defence, diplomacy and cities did the rest. Gradually, the silos were built up so 75% of our spend is now controlled by government.
So when that money reaches a city, up to 30 organisations can feed into that city in telling it how to do it. So firstly, you have total duplication from central government and local government. Secondly, local government can’t, at the moment – except in rare cases – absolutely coordinate, learn, aggregated purchasing, be smart – all the things that you’re probably aware of.
Now, why is that? I think there’s two points. Taken me a little bit of time to understand one of them. The first is fear. So if a city comes up with an idea and says, we can save 20% of that item, the Government is likely to respond and say, okay, we approve that, you’re going to save 20%.
Now, the reality is, it’s a holistic process, as this lady has described. It’s a whole city or a whole town. But the fear factor of actually saying, we are going to save 20% seems to stop a number of people actually putting their hands up.
And the fear factor then starts determining exactly what goes on. Nobody really wants to put their head on the block so we go nowhere. Million, billions to save, a much more caring society could be achieved, much more efficient, and really importantly, lots of invention at local level, growth, better quality of life, better environment; it’s all there, but ask government.
John Sorrell
Thank you, Stuart. Is the mic working, is it on? Can you hear? I think we’ve got to stop now because it is tea time. I think what I take out of this session is that procurement is still an absolutely major issue. It’s always been an issue, all the time I’ve been involved in the world of design and government.
And I think it’s about time that we did something about it but what I think we have to understand is that there aren’t really two sides, there’s not them and us. There’s not the people doing the procurement and the people, if you like, in our industry and I think it’s very much up to the people in this room who have got all kinds of ideas and thoughts about what we can do to try and find a way – and perhaps the Design Council has got a very serious challenge here, David, to try and find a way to work with government, with the people who are in the front line doing this, to help to find better solutions.
With that, I’d like to thank our speakers and I’d like to thank all of you and I’d like to thank all our friends online. And it’s tea time but don’t forget to come back after tea. Thank you.