Brazil's procurer of last resort & the UK's missed opportunity

I had an absolutely fantastic time with friends at the University of Ro de Janeiro during 2011. I couldn't help but be impressed with how the university was working hand-in-hand with industry and the public sector in providing procurement support. I remain convinced the UK could learn a lot from those partnerships and that learning from their experience would help the UK industrial strategy. You can read about my visit here and here.

However, I find the recent news that public procurement processes in Brazil are so unwieldy and cumbersome that a deal has been made with the UN to handle some of their procurement in the run up to the World Cup. Let's not forget that the World Cup is only one of international events Brazil will host over the next few years, including the Olympics. Some brief observations:

1. If your procurement process aren't fit for purpose, change the procurement processes;
2. Given that the UK have been forging stronger relationships with Brazil, with plenty of ministerial missions, and the general acknowledgement that the procurement for the London Olympics was well managed, why on earth did the UK not identify this potential opportunity - can we not turn procurement expertise into an internationally tradable service? 
3. Given the need for stronger political alliances with Latin American countries, could we not use procurement expertise as a diplomatic resource?

I cannot understand how Brazil have got themselves into this situation, but at least they had the good sense to get support. But equally I just cannot understand how the UK missed such a strategic opportunity.  

Wish I was there.

Return of the iPads

I recently  referred to being asked to produce a business case for iPads. I was astounded that, without any meaningful development of a business case, a self-fulfilling conclusion seemed to have been arrived at that business could no longer be carried out efficiently without this 'must have accessory'. 

Anyway our friends at Apple seemed to have just developed the 'sale of the century'. Now all those procurement and finance people who would advocate the need for a meaningful business case have just been punched in the solar plexus - the House of Commons Administration Committee has apparently now recommended "rapid rollout of suitable mobile table hardware" to all 650 MPs.

It's not that the MPs lack technology to support them in their work; they already have three desktops and two laptops - I suspect also a Blackberry. (I hope someone has asked the question relating to how much slower they travel with all this luggage.  I also hope they have completed an H&S assessment to protect against potential injury.)
Nevertheless,

Obama's State of the Union message to procurement

It’s not often I take the time to look for procurement messages in a US Presidential address, but Obama’s State of the Union address has some interesting messages for the procurement world.

Obama views the economy has been weakened as a result of outsourcing!  Does he mean

BRAZIL - observations of a ‘BRIC’ (Part 2)

I made the 45 minute flight from Rio to Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais. Minas Gerais has 853 municipalities! It wasn’t the recently opened new City of State Administration (four buildings which cost £250m to build and houses 15,000 staff), which impressed me most, but the hunger of the strategists I met.  This team of departmental directors briefed me on their work and 20 year strategy.

They demonstrated a real hunger to learn from the UK experience of strategic commissioning, community engagement in shaping priorities, how to move towards a focus on outcomes, pooled budgets and community budgets.  They wanted to learn from the experience of the how the UK had encouraged examples of innovative local government practice and then shared those case studies so that others could learn and speak face-to-face with the innovators. Communities of Practice and the improvement work of the former IDeA were also of great interest. This team had a real and visible hunger to learn.  They want to be the best in Brazil.  I discovered that this group, with an average age of around 25, were the outcome of a strategic approach to recruitment.  All students in secondary education had an option of sitting an exam.  Success in the exam covered not only the cost of their degree in Public Administration but a guarantee of a two year post in the Minas Gerais state administration.  The public sector was clearly reaping the benefits. Would the UK make such an investment? 

Singling out Minas Gerais is perhaps unfair.  When I delivered a similar seminar to the state of Rio, those staff wanted to learn more and more about the same subjects, namely, strategic commissioning, community engagement in shaping priorities, how to move towards a focus on outcomes, pooled budgets and community budgets, developing and sharing council good practice, and sector led improvement.  They also wanted to understand consortia and shared services approaches to procurement. Despite giving them many opportunities to close the discussion, they opted for a four-hour seminar. I doubt I did more than whet their appetite – certainly their enthusiasm at the end of four hour for asking questions had not waned.

I also met with state owned public sector organisations.  The state oil company, ‘Petrobras’, and pharmaceutical company, ‘Bio Manguinhos’ wanted a more strategic procurement.  Amongst the big questions from them were: How do we get the organisation to work better together in procurement?  How do we introduce category management and set up consortia purchasing?  How do we cope with a legal environment that is far more prescriptive than that of the European public procurement rules?  Alongside operational questions such as, how would we best buy travel and hotel services?

For someone with a public sector procurement improvement background I thrived on these seminars, discussions and questions.  But what was fascinating to me was the engagement with the academic community in supporting municipalities, state and state owned businesses.  The GPI (Groupo de Producao Intergrada) team, which invited me, were working with all these public sector organisations on problem solving and developing ‘a better way’.  Why do we not have such an integrated approach in the UK?

Behind all the questions, there was also an implied but sometime explicit question for the UK to answer, how can Brazil remove corruption from the public sector?  I explained the steps taken since the 1970s ‘Poulson Affair’, but the recurring response was ‘but what do you do in Brazil, now?’

So to me Brazil is different.  It has almost 6,000 municipalities.  Only came out of dictatorship in 1988 and is still the early steps of democracy but one thing is clear, Brazil is a country which has much to learn from the UK.  Likewise it’s important to recognise the UK has much to learn from Brazil – let’s remember it was from Brazil the idea of participatory budgeting came to the UK!  

BRAZIL - observations of a ‘BRIC’ (Part 1)

For so many years I have heard UK councils and the public sector in general, echo, “we are different”.   While I believe that each local community has its nuances and therefore is different, my visit to Brazil during August puts that UK discussion in context.  A Federal structure of state and municipalities is different from the UK but key areas of interest were the UK approach to strategic commissioning, the UK focus on outcomes commissioning, community budgets and procurement appear to be of major interest to Brazil.  But Brazil also has useful lessons which the UK could learn from.  Also clear was the inquisitive nature of those I met and their passion for public sector improvement.

I was there at the invitation of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and they had a packed schedule in place. I delivered a number of seminars to State Governments and their advisers, met with municipal officers, had guided tours of cities, advised Federal public sector organisations on strategic procurement, addressed the National Contract Management Association and had many one-to-one discussions with students. Of course I also had time to enjoy trekking in the world’s largest urban forest.

During my two weeks I discovered Brazil IS DIFFERENT.  But that difference highlighted opportunities for the UK and Brazil to learn from each other.

My first observation of Brazil was from the window of the plane.  I must have flown the equivalent of the length of the UK without any sign whatsoever of human habitation.  Brazil is big, well, Brazil is very big and a lot of it is open space!  Paradoxically a city like Rio is dense!

The image of Beauty and the Beast comes to mind but first let’s remember that the Beast in the story has a soft side and turns out to be full of virtue.  As I travelled within Rio it wasn’t the majestic landscape of Sugarloaf and Corcovado, or beautiful old buildings recalling the days of colonialism which marked Rio as different, nor the modern office blocks which would not look out of place at Canary Wharf, nor the mind boggling 13km bridge to Niteroi. 

No, what is indelibly stamped in my mind is that the architectural gems, both old and the new, sit side-by-side the Favelas, the self-constructed Brazilian equivalent of shantytowns which are the home of one third of Rio’s community. Wherever I went in Rio, I was less than a few metres away from a Favela. 

One of the biggest challenges to Brazil is clearly realising the potential of these ‘Beasts’ and transforming those communities into Beauties.  The Favela bring extreme poverty and crime challenges.  How do the UK debates of Big Society and localism transfer to this society of need and difference?  Having lived in Belfast most of my life I could remember the ‘no-go areas’.  This was different.  I asked my hosts if they had ever driven through a Favela (implying can we drive through a Favela).  My impression was that they had never been in any of the Favela. I was regaled with the account of a UK chief police officer who when asked for solutions to the Favela just replied, “this can not be solved”. I was also shown YouTube films of favela ‘pacification’ – absolutely unbelievable in terms of the war on crime.  Why is there so much deprivation?   Well I don’t have an answer, but I think the lack of an achievable public sector blueprint for success is part of the problem and the control of organised crime.  But perversely it also appears that these communities also have a remarkable sense of community.

While the security services have embarked upon a strategy of pacification of the Favela, removing the power of drug related organised crime – and I mean with heavy arms, it was here I heard of one of the lessons from Brazil in listening to the community.  The biggest Favela have 200,000 residents and many have no roads as the buildings have been constructed so close together, no sanitation, no services, ….  So as part of pacifying one Favela the community asked for a ski-lift.  The ski-lift which covers miles, in a state which has never seen snow, has the sole purpose of moving residents across the Favela.  A clear sense of local community is needed to become part of the wider citizenry of Brazil otherwise Brazil will be starved of some of the oxygen of improvement – could the UK help?