And it sucks that reporters don’t know better!

This headline, repeated across over a dozen sites this week, really annoyed me:

German ex-officer convicted of handing procurement secrets to Russia

He may have handed secrets to Russia, but there were NOT Procurement secrets!

When it comes to Procurement, overall, your competitors, and their Procurement personnel, don’t know any more than you do. They don’t have access to any more information than you have access to. They don’t have secret technology. The only differences are:

• their investment in the Procurement function
• their willingness to learn
• their willingness to acquire, implement, and use new Procurement technology

… but NONE of that is “secret”, and certainly not “state secret”.

(And if you still believe there are secrets, then the doctor will sell you some, starting at only $1,999 USD per secret! Bundle discounts available. Simply e-mail thedoctor at sourcinginnovation dot com) with a brief message stating how many secrets you would like, and he’ll send you a secret sharing non disclosure agreement and payment instructions.)

Yes, the officer worked in the Procurement office, and, as a result, had access to secret information as, outside of Engineering, Legal, the C-Suite, etc. the ONLY Department who has full access to corporate/state secrets is Procurement (as they need the specs), and it’s the ONLY department outside of the C-Suite that has access to organization-wide secrets.

So, yes, this practitioner had access to secrets and yes he could have handed them over to Russia, but they weren’t Procurement secrets — they were state secrets in internal documents he just happened to have access to as a result of his role.