£138M has been saved, audited and signed off by the ERG. Stranger still, the majority was proclaimed by an incumbent that might well wish to be seen to be doing what it is paid to do, especially as it hopes to win another term in office.

What immaculate timing. Can such claims stand scrutiny? Have civil servants continued beavering around the country, and indeed the world, with the post election axe still hovering above their job-fearful heads?

Endlessly racking up the same amount of travel miles, hotels and expenses, they miraculously managed to do this for £138m less. I wonder – it is perhaps possible, especially if a suitable get-out clause was chosen. Though I choose to assume that they are proclaiming proudly that they simply don’t travel anymore. How modern.

Of course, questioning the actual need to travel remains rule number one in any travel policy.

Q: Do you need to travel?
A: (invariably) Probably not.

Post election, non-essential travel was ruled out. In fact all spending, aside from a new office for a deputy PM and new PM ‘friends’, was ruled out. These hard times seemed an ideal opportunity to homogenise departmental travel policy but it hasn’t happened. Some managed to hurdle this perennial stumbling block. Others (stand up again MOD) did not.

The ‘return on investment’ is the principal travel qualifier – what more do you gain from a face-to-face meeting? Could we use Webex, Skype, video-conferencing or simply pick up the phone? Of course we could.

Demands made of TMCs to facilitate the mechanisms to deliver sustainable alternatives were quickly removed from the recent Government RFP. Why? Surely such a demand was not beyond any of the combatants.

Sadly that chance has gone. We await news (with no surprises) on just who has secured that RFP. We must now look to colleagues in the wider public sector, with their oft over-looked billions of travel spend, to learn from our mistakes and ensure that their forthcoming travel procurement fairs far better.

The university challenge remains the protectionist owners of often very hard-earned grant funding, but the most hard boiled of eggs and department heads must see the logic of releasing travel spend to travel spend managers. Trust them to manage travel whilst academics concentrate on their core activities. These monies can no longer be considered untouchable and therefore beyond policy. Many millions of travel pounds will need consolidation. In our new private education system, OJEU considerations may well take a back seat. Openness, clarity, clearly defined specifications, joined up policy and an appetite for real dialogue and change should see the seats of learning teaching us all a very valuable procurement lesson.

• This column represents the views of the author and are not necessarily those of Public Sector Travel.

And what of their pupils? The English Spring rose late, with isolated pockets of support; criminal opportunity thrashed ideology before being knocked off course by sleeping policemen. Thankfully, more professional looters rushed home (from holiday) to save the day and our summer. One conviction-politician made an arson of himself whilst his BFF was demonstrating how to truly intimidate. Headline grabbing victimisation, magical distraction and blame tactics followed: lame police, Fatherless bastard upbringing and the broken (record) society took the hit. Opposition argued hard, amongst itself, dribbling out mixed messages. The 80’s dark ages seemed depressingly close and hope, optimism and growth was up in smoke. Back to Black, another summer casualty’s ghost sang.

Meanwhile back in Whitehall, with spend power harnessed; opportunity and hope sprang from our collective £2b travel bid. The GPS (not the 80’s SPG) led from the front, corralling troops with benefit tales, and with great expectation we went to market.

But ‘benefit fraud’ charges may arise. No information in=No promised savings out. Starving suppliers of information is futile. To be brave is business-like; stonewalling and sniping from behind OJEU is bullying, cowardly and disingenuous. Get corporate don’t act corporate; inform suppliers and keep them informed throughout. Anything but clarity is costly.

In the two lot bid our domestic, well-behaved lot sells itself. Simply identified no- touch online rail and accommodation transactions are attractive to the market. Costs will fall with many TMCs bidding to win control of the value-add; in this case, management information. With online booking tool adoption mandated, current costs could be reduced by 50%.

The other lot, which includes DFID, CO, FCO, MOD, is difficult and needs more careful handling. How do you manage such an unruly gang of insurgents? Big travel guns have lined up to try and knock ‘em dead and encourage smiles back on beleaguered travel managers’ faces. But no real dialogue still equates to no realistic hope on pricing. Combative Incumbents still hold advantage in any procurement so fundamental rules of engagement must change if we want real savings and a value return on bid process investment.

Word is, most clarification calls were rejected.

Likely reasonable questions? Implants or a centralised call-centre? How many calls translate into a booking? Staff vetting? Shouting for a World Class travel programme and extraordinary service metrics then shutting the communication door will not do.

More alarming is the allegation of bid fee-capping. Possibly restrictive, creative offers are suppressed. Departments might be content to pay more than bid-sanctioned for air transactions if their rail fees came in lower. Second-guessing TMC levers and obstructing their offers with price caps is counter-productive. Further squeezing them to reveal and return marketing budgets, the air that keeps some actually going, will ultimately push our fees up.

Arrogantly assuming that our business is always attractive to the market is foolhardy; beating up suppliers, like most excesses of the eighties, should be consigned to the past.

• This column represents the views of the author and are not necessarily those of Public Sector Travel.

But wait, recent carping press is well-laced with ‘Corporate Glasto’ headlines. Wednesday’s apprehensive apprentice can reliably and excitedly belch it at every Board opportunity. Corporate, the former swear word, has become fashionable and finally entered our Whitehall vocabulary.

You might hope that travel buyers longed for a Civil Service version of ‘corporate’, but like other c-words, notably change and compliance, it has historically met with a mixed “you too?” Friday afternoon audience response.

What might ‘corporate’ Whitehall travel look like? Perhaps one policy, and only one policy, based solely on the journey for whoever you are, whatever your grade and no, 30 years’ service does not qualify you for a first class open ticket. Forget the argument that you have sensitive documents. Apart from the naïve assumption that first class passengers do not have eyes or ears; you just wouldn’t travel with sensitive documents. Repeatedly drilled, standard security procedure forbids you from doing anything other than locking those documents away in line with your ‘clear desk policy’. (An outsider might wonder what desks normally look like if we actually require policy to make sure we clear them occasionally.)

We civil servants can deliver a mandated single supplier to each of two distinctive travel lots, another reasonable corporate procurement concept. But this time, which departments have been assigned to each of these lots has already been decided. Their fate, like their bids, has been sealed with the in-ink (if not in blood) contracted promise. What could possibly be simpler?

Combing the CS dictionary for former expletives, ‘mandated’ loomed large, another word not on everyone’s lips. But we might rightly ask – and John Collington and his new head of travel will surely ask – why not?

We owe it to our suppliers to deliver on these new promises. We go to extraordinary lengths to be transparent and mark bids accurately and dispassionately, but will those final lot winners be welcomed? Or will Whitehall departments wriggle and whine at the thought of change? Might they insist on yet another mini competition, driving up our costs and our suppliers to distraction?

Suppliers will be digging hard into their resources. We should realise that a substantial investment is required on their part: sales teams; bid writing and management; service delivery; investment in electronic booking relationships; the staffing-up of call centres; data crunching considerations; access to routes and fares… the list goes on and on. An RFP of this size must cost £50-70k to answer in any completeness.

Yes, the rewards are large but this time, just what will our reaction be and will Departments grasp the opportunity? Will they move from their often-redundant incumbents who have happily taken fees for years, content that they will continue to do so because we have historically proven our ability to resist change (at every cost)
We can only hope, that maybe at last, the times they are a changin’.

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.