Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

28. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the number of persons employed by his Department to collect data on public procurement; their level of remuneration; and when the Government will begin publishing the awarding of contracts in the future. [38012/14]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

One of the key priorities set out in the Public Service Reform Plan is to reduce costs and achieve better value for money through reform of public procurement. The Office of Government Procurement (OGP) was launched in July 2013 and operates as an office of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The OGP is responsible for procurement policy and procedures and together with the four key Sectors of Health, Education, Local Government and Defence will source goods and service for the whole of the public sector.  A key enabler to the success of this project is the ability to centrally collect and analyse historical, current and future spend (non-pay) data from all Public Service bodies and extract and analyse other procurement data from various systems to generate intelligent reports to help drive procurement strategy and reform. The IT system that will enable this data collection and reporting is called a Business Intelligence system.

This data collection project is currently managed by one Product Manager who is responsible for delivering this Business Intelligence system and one Data Analyst who assists with the data collection and performs analysis of the procurement data. OGP are currently recruiting for a second data analyst and a system administrator for the business intelligence solution. The Data Analysts and the System Administrator are at the EO grade (€40,760 mid-point of the pay scale) and the Product Manager is at HEO grade (€51,581 mid-point of the pay scale). The Product Manager's time on the project is planned reduce to approx. 50% from Q2 2015.  In addition, the Office has also engaged the services of an IT contractor to assist in the devlopment of the interim solution and processes for data collection. This engagement is for a period of 8 weeks.

The manual data collection phase of the project commenced at the start of this year.  Approximately 55% of non-pay addressable spend (excluding drugs, capital expenditure etc.) estimated at approximately €6.5 bn in total has been collected so far for 2011-2013. To date an interim solution developed by the OGP which is largely manual has been used.  OGP is planning to go to market for an enterprise Business Intelligence solution which will improve efficiency and permit a broader scope of data sources for this initiative.

There is a requirement on all Public Sector bodies to publish contract award notices above EU thresholds on the e-Tenders website and on Official Journal of the European Union.  The OGP has reported on data available on e-Tenders for above threshold contracts awarded on many occasions.  Circular 10/14 requires the use of eTenders for publication of all tenders above €25,000 for goods and services and €50,000 for works.  The Circular also requires entry of the contract award details into eTenders with effect from 1 August 2014. This requirement will expand the award detail information available for reports for tenders published post-1 August and the OGP will collect that information from e-Tenders into the Business Intelligence solution and generate reports once sufficient data is available.

It is anticipated that quarterly reports will be published on procurement, i.e. on frameworks and contracts awarded above €25,000.