In this first of a regular monthly series of missives from the heart of Government, a travel buyer, who you will understand needs to remain anonymous, shares a thought or two.

So, spring and all that it brings; surprise sunny days and privilege days off for your humble civil servant. Indeed, the very mention of a privilege day will soon be a privilege. Never mind the removal of whole departments, enforced pay freezes and pension caps – the attacks rain in. Central spending reviews, austerity measures… one might wonder if there will soon be any need for the civil servant? Extinction too surely beckons for the beautiful hard working elephant that is the Civil Service. How long can it limp and lumber on, its creaking legs continually hacked and chopped at?

Still, it is a long weekend, a welcome break and some time to reflect. A year on from the May (hem) elections, just what has occurred? A coalition government, a freeze on recruitment, a clearing of the decks and some insightful and, let’s not forget, well publicised procurement advice that was offered up by our influential friend and conservative peer, Philip Green. Could anyone possibly procure better?

Well, apparently not. He wasted no little time in telling us how best we could re-dress our very own window with some Top Shop tips. The (very) basic tenure of the lecture seeming to revolve around his proud maxim, “Well obviously, you get as much spend as you can muster and throw it at the market…they will bite your hand off.”

Hmmm, thanks for that Philip. But, to parrot a phrase, calm down, peer. Forgive the raising of a ‘Strategic’ eyebrow, but will that really work for Government procurement? Perhaps. Central procurement? Possibly. Travel procurement? Unlikely.
Travel procurement is just too damn important to throw our collective spend at TMCs.

Departments must take some collective responsibility for the market’s reticence; we must see some sense. The endless force-feeding of numerous data sets, however seemingly frequent or fervently demanded, was never going to convince anyone that we were serious about collective spend. Moreover, they never quite seemed to add up. Capturing spend (our own Osama bête noire) has never been easy, leaving the central travel buyer vulnerable to the rightly suspicious TMCs.

As luck would have it, we now have our own super (recently cleaned up) model to help us market, manage and make the changes – Buying Solutions. Rebranded and regurgitated, after being swallowed whole by the department-greedy Cabinet Office, it is now super slim and fit for purpose; ready for action sans trading arm and chief executive. What, you might ask, are they going to ask us to do?

Well, we are to get our collective spend together and, if not exactly throw it at the market, divide it into two very attractive lots and offer up these foreign and domestic sacraments to the suppliers; giving them yet another chance to bid, understand and share our pain.

So what is so different this time? After all, this government’s decision places a newly promoted J.C. very close to G.O.D. Their gospel cites one key message and (listen up at the back) the message is: mandation.

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