Procurement
We look at government procurement and how it can be improved.
Procurement and outsourcing
See allHow to approach insourcing and outsourcing
Key questions you should ask when making decisions on government outsourcing and insourcing.
Managing consultants
Advice from current and former consultants and civil servants for officials on managing consultants in government.
Carillion: two years on
The Johnson government risks another Carillion if it doesn’t get behind the reforms put forward after the firm’s liquidation.
Government procurement
One third of government’s spending is with contractors: last year, four departments spent more than half their budgets with external suppliers.
Insourcing
Reunification of probation services
MoJ's preparations for the reunification of services and their transition back into the department.
Government outsourcing: when and how to bring public services back into government hands
Bringing back services from the private sector to government hands can improve quality, increase reliability, and save money.
Recent events
The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill
How will the government’s new Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill work?
Jeremy Hunt’s spring budget 2024 did little to address long-term problems in public services
With the dust settled on the budget, Nick Davies looks at what it means for public services.
The Hoyle crisis
ConservativeHome’s Henry Hill joins the podcast team to make sense of the Gaza debate and to weigh up how much trouble Speaker Lindsay Hoyle is in.
Six lessons government should learn from the Post Office scandal
The handling of the Post Office scandal has wider lessons for government.
Outsourcing and privatisation
What is the difference between outsourcing and privatisation?
Read our explainerBriefings and barges do not make for good asylum policy
The government’s ‘small boats week’ may fill a recess-shaped hole in the media grid, but won’t help the prime minister ‘stop the boats’.
Why government (still) needs to dispose of ‘Take Out the Trash Day’
The habit of issuing a deluge of data and documents as parliament rises for the summer is bad for scrutiny.
Randstad episode shows government has still not learnt lessons from past procurement failures
It is right that schools will now take on the tutoring programme – but government must explain, and finally learn from, its latest contract stumble.
Our procurement team
Nick Davies
Programme Director