Category Archives: Public Sector

Public Procurement in 2020 — Are You On Track? Part III

In Monday’s post, we begin our discussion of Hansen’s predictions for public procurement in 2020, which were offered as a 5-part series last month in response to the 5 predictions of Bob Lohfeld (of Lohfeld Consulting) that were published in Washington Technology in early July. We started with a discussion of the Government Market and then moved onto a discussion of Workforce. Today, we will discuss Process.

In his piece, in a nutshell, Lohfeld prognosticated that:

(1) There will be a strong connection between technology and workflow to enforce process rigour and increase efficiency. (2) Business development, capture management, and proposal development processes will become more agile and refined to fit shorter procurement life cycles. (3) We will place renewed emphasis on process maturity. (4) Process optimization will be based on actual measurements taken across multiple capture and proposal efforts and will use statistical analysis as the basis for process change. (5) Companies will implement business development, capture management and proposal development into an integrated workflow management system that serves as the corporate repository to manage all new business pursuits.

Whazitsayin? SI has to agree with Hansen when he said I quite frankly did not understand what Lohfeld’s actual process prediction entailed. Let’s take it statement by statement. (1) There’s already a strong connection between technology and workflow because most departments blindly do whatever the system tells them. This doesn’t increase efficiency. (2) If lifecycles shorten, either steps will be eliminated, but since this is government, more likely this means more e-Solutions will be adopted to collect and “analyze” information faster. But this doesn’t do much to enforce process rigour. (3) This is the same spiel that every consulting organization cycles through every 5 to 10 years. (4) This is likely since more and more systems are taking measurements and presenting metrics and benchmarks in (dashboard) reports so any process optimization that does occur will be able to use these measurements, but this does’t answer the question of how much process optimization will occur. (5) The private sector will likely integrate these systems, but there’s no guarantee that the public sector will upgrade right away. The private sector takes long enough to upgrade a SAP or Oracle or similar ERP implementation (because of the massive investment they want to amortize over 10+ years). The public sector often takes even longer. I don’t see much in the way of prediction here.

Plus, as Hansen points out, one has to remember that organizations in both the public and private sectors spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to adapt their operations to an ideal workflow that in reality created more work re: cycles on the front lines than it did the expected efficiencies, and most of them failed. So just making a stronger connection between technology and workflow isn’t going to fix things. If the process is bad, automating it just makes it worse. Process will only improve when people realize that it has to adapt to the way in which [they] actually work (versus creating an illusionary ideal) and begin to create an utilize an adaptive model that maximizes the organization’s ability to customize workflow processes leveraging modularity. But since this will likely require the application of SaaS-based technologies within the framework of a (semi) private hub, this could take a while. Thus, at least in SIs view, we should not expect massive process improvement in 2020 in your average government organization. Just the same old processes automated and tweaked to run a little faster.

Public Procurement in 2020 — Are You On Track? Part II

In yesterday’s post, we begin our discussion of Hansen’s predictions for public procurement in 2020, which were offered as a 5-part series last month in response to the 5 predictions of Bob Lohfeld (of Lohfeld Consulting) that were published in Washington Technology in early July. Yesterday we discussed the Government Market. Today, we will discuss Workforce.

In his piece, in a nutshell, Lohfeld prognosticated that:

  • The workforce will be more diverse based on population shifts away from cities, and professionals will be employed in a virtual world without regard to where they reside. Baby boomers will be in their 70s and still actively engaged in the workforce either on a part- or full-time basis.
  • Employees will work on global government projects where work is performed in virtual space and staffed by people from multiple countries brought together for their technical expertise, without regard to cultural or geopolitical backgrounds.
  • The workforce will be able to support the entire bid life cycle, instead of discrete segments such as proposals or capture. Technology proficiency will be mandatory, and those who are slow to adopt or resist technology entirely will face dwindling prospects.

Yes, work will become more virtual. Yes, work will continue to be staffed from people in multiple countries. And, yes, the workforce collectively will be able to support the life cycle, but how does this help? Like Hansen says, its lack of depth and imagination is tantamount to the empty calories of a Three Musketeers bar.

SI has to agree with Hansen – the real issue centres on the Clark and Fourastie three (now four) sector hypothesis of how a wealthy nation’s economy evolves. The hypothesis includes the extraction of raw materials (Primary), manufacturing (Secondary), services (Tertiary) and knowledge-based (Quaternary). The workforce will be aligned to where the economy is. Plus, as Hansen points out, multiple factors such as time, increased globalization, a weakened economy and political sensibilities can and do in fact intertwine into a convoluted landscape. And this effects the diversity of the workforce that comes together for any project.

Plus, what about the communication challenge? How do we deal with the situation where, literally, four generations work side by side on projects in the same (virtual) office location. How do we simultaneously communicate with people who have never worked without the internet and people who have never really used it and still have no idea of its potential? Until we answer this question, prognostication on the workforce for the average government organization is missing the point.

Public Procurement in 2020 — Are You On Track? Part I

Last month, Bob Lohfeld of Lohfeld Consulting, a consulting firm that specializes in creating winning proposals for government contractors, published a commentary on 5 predictions for 2020 in Washington Technology that was, well, pretty generic and not all that useful. Jon Hansen of Procurement Insights did a deep dive into the 5-predictions in a 5-part series back in July that were much more detailed, in-depth, and, for the most part, at least in SI’s view, more accurate than Lohfeld’s.

This week, SI will review Hansen’s five part series on Hansen’s predictions for the Government Market, Workforce, Process, Technology, and Transportation. SI will take it one post at a time and try to paint a partial picture of 2020, based on what it feels are accurate predictions from Hansen. Where SI feels it is necessary, it will endeavour to fill in the gaps. It’s challenging to look ahead nine years, and impossible to predict everything, but it is possible to extrapolate some likelihoods based upon historical developments and current directions. Similarly, it is equally possible to rule out certain directions as they will be significantly unlikely.

Today, we’ll start with the Government Market. In his piece, Lohfeld prognosticated, in a nutshell, that:

  • Government and industry will be partners, working together to streamline acquisition processes and reduce wasteful proposal requirements.
  • The need for hard-copy proposal submissions will have disappeared or diminished sharply.
  • Performance-based contracting will finally be understood by both government and industry.
  • Government procurement organizations will have been substantially rebuilt.

In response to this predicted reformation of the public procurement sector, Hansen noted that there are three major stumbling blocks:

  1. leadership and the need to replace the old guard,
  2. a compelling need to address what has become an over-bloated workforce, and
  3. the absence of creative originality in the approach to solving said problems.

This is definitely the case. As noted in SI’s recent post on how Perfect Procurement Processes Will Not Save the Public Sector, major changes need to occur, including the need to:

  1. stop ignoring past performance,
  2. remove arbitrary MWBE requirements, and
  3. pay salaries at scales in line with the public sector

but none of this will happen without strong leadership who feels the sudden need to address the over-bloated under-performing workforce and has the open mindedness to find create solutions to age-old problems. And this is a problem because, as Hansen says, most governments are a morass of competing and conflicting interests that rarely if ever align themselves within the framework of a cohesive strategy for change.

Furthermore, as Hansen says, the extent to which paper-based transactions will dissipate into a cloud of electronic efficiency is uncertain. While paperless may be taking off in Europe, it’s really lagging in North America. Most places offer tenders online, and many will allow, or even insist on electronic copies of the full proposals, but still insist that that cover page, or summary, be submitted in hard-copy, five times, with original signatures from all officers of the submitting organization. It’s inevitable that we will get there, but it may take another lifetime, until the last public purchasing offer who ever insisted on paper has retired. And if life-spans, and retirement age, keep increasing, it could be a long lifetime.

Performance-based contracting may eventually be understood by the public sector, but until outdated legislation is taken off of the books, what can they do? And as to the extent that government procurement organizations will be rebuilt, as Hansen says, at the end of the day, the reality of the economic condition both at the federal and local levels trumps everything. For the first time since the Great Depression state’s and municipalities are facing the very real prospect of having to claim bankruptcy. As a result, the public sector procurement practice is likely to remain in a kind of non-active limbo for the foreseeable future and for some time to come.