How the public and private sectors can work together better

Spoke today at the Supply Conference North West on how the public and private sectors can work together better. It was mainly a private sector audience of suppliers to local government.

After putting the economic context facing public services at present I went on to talk about the interdependency of the public and private sectors upon each other in local economies. I have explained our economic footprint research and the £1.64 concept on this blog many times before.

The Prime Ministers 'We are all in this together' video clip raised a laugh especially because of some problems with the technology.

APSE's 'More Bang for the public buck' research raised a lot of interest.

My conclusions were that in the current climate the public sector are going to be even more focused on getting every penny of value they can from procurement processes in order to maximise the value of their spend for the local community. There will be a much greater emphasis on promoting local economies, along with better supplier management and any supplier who really wants to be successful with local authorities will need to demonstrate how they can bring added value to that area.

One brave soul suggested that focusing on local economies like Manchester was wrong and that value was all about cost. He was from a business outsourcing services company from Yorkshire!