Organisation: The Government Outcomes Lab
Outcomes can be knotty for public procurement, but are we learning to untangle ourselves? Procuring social services on an outcomes basis is different for procurement, legal, and contract management professionals more accustomed to buying activities or short term outputs. This session explored practical approaches to the opportunities and challenges of outcomes-based contracts from these professionals' perspectives. (See also last year's SOC22 Deep Dive 2.1 session, Outcomes are knotty for public procurement here.)
In the second deep dive, SOC23 participants had the chance to discuss practical approaches to the opportunities and challenges of outcomes-based contracts for public procurement. Jonathan Bland, Julian Blake and Jamie Veitch shared insights that commissioning stewardship in public services is just as important as competition, and so procurement should promote collaboration. Shira Tzachor and Yehonatan Almog shared insights from the procurement of social services in Israel. In their experience, system change requires a holistic approach encompassing policy and methodology development, data and infrastructure creation and human capital and capacity building. Professor Simon Collinson shared ongoing work in leveraging procurement procedure to reach sustainability targets: “if spending power is focused on suppliers adopting new net-zero technologies, then you’d have an increase in sustainability.” Russ Wood spoke on how to bring traditional public infrastructure procurement together with social services procurement.