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Last month the Government Commercial Function (GCF) in collaboration with the Government Consulting Hub launched "The Consultancy Playbook" which provides guidance on how to commission and engage with consultants more effectively with the aim of "achieving better outcomes, better value for money and improved Civil Service capability".
The guidance applies to all central government departments and their arm's-length bodies when going to the market for any consultancy services. It should be considered by local authorities, as well as the wider public sector.
The Consultancy Playbook, which forms part of the Sourcing Playbook, focuses on 3 key areas:
1. Getting things right at the start - deciding whether external consultancy support is required at all and if so, setting the procurement up for success and ensuring effective early market engagement. "One of the biggest challenges with sourcing consultancy services is the need to work at pace. Recognising this, the Playbook sets out how to get things right at the start. This will not only save time downstream, but deliver greater value for money and help to build stronger relationships with suppliers."
2. Going to market - ensuring procurements are properly structured to allow the market to offer effective and innovative solutions, focusing on the following key principles to:
" - work collaboratively with industry and, where appropriate, use the market’s knowledge and expertise to help build our requirements and specifications
- shift the focus of our requirements to the overall outcomes we want to achieve, articulating the deliverables that help us produce those outcomes in the specification
- structure our specifications and evaluation questions and criteria to allow for unique and innovative responses without being overly prescriptive
- include building government knowledge and capability as a core requirement when we commission consultants
".
3. Maximising value throughout - right from pre-procurement to contract exit, looking to maximise value by being a more "effective" client and by ensuring knowledge generation and transfer. "‘Consultants will add more value if we are an intelligent client that champions knowledge transfer and puts collaborative ways of working at the heart of all engagements."
This Playbook focuses on getting consultancy engagements right at the start, ensuring that we are using consultants in the right instances to solve specific problems, and avoiding over reliance on external support. This approach will deliver both value for money and better quality projects and public services for the citizens that use and rely on them.
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