Scottish authorities team up on e-procurement

Scottish Executive to save £200m a year through standardising local council procurement

Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen City Council have joined forces in an e-procurement transformation project intended to cut costs and boost efficiency.

The councils are using separate systems to support a centralised purchasing unit in the hope it will eliminate maverick spending and allow stronger negotiation with suppliers through shared data.

Aberdeen is installing eProcurement Scotland (ePS), a Scottish Executive system intended to standardise local council procurement processes and generate annual savings of £200m.

But Aberdeenshire has rejected Scottish Executive recommendations and instead installed Oracle’s iProcurement system.

A Scottish Executive spokeswoman told Computing that its policy states ePS should be the system of choice for local authorities and other public sector organisations because of its access to collaborative content.

‘Twelve out of Scotland’s 32 councils have installed ePS and a number are reviewing their procurement processes,’ she said.

Aberdeenshire project leader Ken Armstrong says integration with other systems in each council is more significant than across the two separate councils.

‘We chose not to install ePS because we already had an Oracle finance system and decided there was not a good enough business case to install a new system,’ he said.