Procurement
We look at government procurement and how it can be improved.
Procurement and outsourcing
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How 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
Retention in public services
How can government keep workers in the NHS, schools and police?
Local government section 114 (bankruptcy) notices
What is a section 114 notice, and why have councils been issuing more of them recently?
HS2: costs and controversies
How much has the HS2 project cost since its inception?
The development of the UK’s offshore wind sector 2010–16
What can this and future governments learn from the UK's successes in offshore wind policy in the 2010s?
Outsourcing and privatisation
What is the difference between outsourcing and privatisation?
Read our explainer

Briefings 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