Responsive and resilient: how to create more robust procurement in government
Procurement is a vital function for all governments around the world. Purchasing systems need to enable public servants around the world to buy the vital goods that services rely on, while also helping drive efficiency at a time of limited public sector budgets and tackling fraud and error.
To meet these challenges, public services need to transform their purchasing systems, and this Global Government Forum webinar with knowledge partner SAS looked at how governments are using technology to make faster and more robust buying decisions.
The session also looked at how digital procurement and enterprise resource planning systems can help make government purchasing more robust to waste, and tackle fraud and error in payments.
Together we discussed:
- How governments can use technology to empower procurement teams to automate controls, be more efficient and make better decisions.
- How public sector organisations can tackle fraud and error in procurement to better understand their supply chain and gauge and address risk
- How public servants can improve contract management once contracts are signed to maximise value for the public purse.
- How public servants can assist in tightening pre-contract award controls to avoid bid rigging
Panel
Dag Strømsnes, Chief Procurement Officer, Agency for Public and Financial Management, Norway
Dag Strømsnes is Chief Procurement Officer in Norway. He has had this position since 2008. As head of the Norwegian public procurement department Dag is in charge of public procurement in Norway. He is responsible for developing and implementing strategies to ensure that public procurement in full compliance with the financial regulations and rules, and for ensuring that it provides value for money and that sustainable goals are included in the public procurement.in Norway. Dag is also responsible for the CPB, the unit in charge of negotiating framework agreements for the Norwegian government Dag’s department works in relation to covers all kind types of procurements such as for; goods, services, ICT, works/construction, army equipment and infrastructure investments, and has a remit to improve public procurement in Norway. There are 70 employees in his department. Before Dag started as CPO in Norway, he was a director in PwC. He worked as a procurement consultant for eight years.
Matthieu Cahen, Senior Policy Analyst, Public Governance Directorate, OECD
Matthieu Cahen currently works as a senior policy analyst specialised in public procurement and infrastructure delivery in the Public Governance Directorate of the OECD. He works on several projects in different regions of the world, including on the effective delivery of large infrastructure, the implementation of a strategic approach to public procurement or the impacts of public procurement on productivity through selected case studies with Finland, Chile, New Zealand and Ireland. Prior to this, he was heading the Procurement and Advisory Unit in OECD’s Central Purchasing Group where he was responsible for managing procurement for the OECD. In doing so, he promoted procurement as a strategic tool to support decision-making process, implemented Key Performance Indicators measuring procurement performance and introduced a Multi-Year Purchasing Plan. Previous to this, he was a Legal Advisor at the OECD where he negotiated contracts and provided advice on procurement-related issues. Between 2003 and 2005, M. Cahen worked in the French law firm Gide-Loyrette-Nouel. Matthieu holds an Executive Master in International Negotiations and Policy-Making form the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and a Master of Laws from the University Panthéon-Assas in Paris, France.
Arturo Herrera, Global Director for Governance in the Prosperity vertical, World Bank
Mr. Herrera, a Mexican National, has extensive experience in governance, as a practitioner and from the development and academic perspectives. He joined the World Bank in 2010 as Senior Public Sector Management Specialist in the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. He held various positions in the Bank including as Sector Manager in LAC, Practice Manager in Governance Global Practice for the LAC and East Asia and the Pacific regions in the Global Unit before leaving the World Bank Group in 2018.
Between 2018 and 2021 he has held leadership positions in the Government of Mexico as Co-Head of the Finance Team in Presidential Transition Team, Deputy Finance Minister and, most recently, as Minister of Finance and Public Credit. He was also the Chairman of Mexico’s Exchange Commission and Member of the Board of the Central Bank.
As Global Director for Prosperity, country-level governance, especially in fragile, conflict and violent settings; maximizing the effectiveness of operational support for public financial management and public procurement; fostering excellence in the Bank’s Prosperity vertical work on public sector administration and operational support for legal and judicial reforms.
Mr. Herrera has also taught Monetary and Banking and Macro and Micro Economics at both El Colegio de Mexico and New York University where he completed his doctoral studies in Economics.
Laurent Colombant, SAS EMEA Continuous Monitoring Solution Lead
Assisting customers in tackling financial crime, using natural language processing, machine learning and analytics since 1999. After focusing on sanctions screening, anti-money laundering, payment fraud and terrorist cell financing he is now working to address continuous controls monitoring including procure to pay, travel and entertainment, bid rigging and know your supplier and insider fraud modus operandi. He holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Michigan and a joint degree in linguistics, econometrics and computing from the University of Montreal.
Webinar chair: Siobhan Benita, former UK senior civil servant
Siobhan Benita was a senior civil servant with over 15 years’ Whitehall experience. She worked in many of the major delivery departments, including Transport, Environment, Health and Local Government. She also had senior roles at the heart of Government in the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, including supporting the then Cabinet Secretary, Lord O’Donnell to lead work on Civil Service reform and strategy. Siobhan left the Civil Service to run as an independent candidate in the Mayor of London election. She subsequently joined her alma mater, Warwick University as Chief Strategy Officer of Warwick in London and Co-Director of the Warwick Policy Lab.
