Ms Anne Stewart:

I should start by saying there is a procurement executive where these things are discussed on an ongoing basis. We constantly and consistently work with all the parties, including the HSE, in increasing the usage of these central arrangements across all these agencies. There are challenges and they are not a catch-all. They will probably capture 80% to 90% of the overall requirements of all the public agencies. On a consistent basis we work to improve the scope and the available goods and services on those frameworks so that they can be used by individual agencies. I cannot particularly comment directly on the HSE. I know it has section 38 and section 39 agencies which it needs to manage to ensure they are using those central arrangements. They would have their own processes internally as to how they do that.

We also have key account managers who work very closely with each of the agencies, focused on two pieces of activity. One is generating bespoke competitions which the OGP runs on behalf of agencies. We also work with them to increase the scope, change the scope, and make it more aligned to their requirements so that the central arrangements can be leveraged even more. We are working really diligently to try to increase that.