Building a Real-time Model of the UK Public Sector Procurement Industry

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Transforming UK public procurement is a major government priority. New initiatives (outlined in a recent Green Paper) place procurement-transformation at the heart of post-COVID-19 economic recovery. Additionally, January 2021 saw the UK independently join the 'WTO Agreement on Government Procurement', unlocking huge international procurement opportunities. The UK government wishes to leverage the £290bn annual spend on public procurement to drive economic growth and deliver innovation and improvement across the public sector, and to improve public-contract-access for SMEs and social enterprises.To increase transparency and enable suitable suppliers/consortia to bid for contracts, the public sector is mandated by fair competition law to publish all opportunities as tenders.However, true transparency does not yet exist. Tender publications are scattered, with potential suppliers needing to search multiple platforms to find suitable tenders, creating a barrier to entry to the public market. SMEs are further disadvantaged as larger enterprises often have greater resources to scour many sources for relevant tenders, build relationships with public-sector entities, and gain an advantage by understanding requirements that may soon be put out to tender. The current system is equally challenging for public bodies seeking services from the private sector, as they have no visibility over suppliers' track records or ability to benchmark their capability to deliver outside of a bid created by the supplier.The outcome is a procurement landscape where large contracts are often awarded to the most convenient suppliers rather than the best-fit, resulting in poor value-for-money for the taxpayer and incredibly expensive controversies (e.g. the collapse of Carillion in 2019 that left 50,000 people unemployed).Stotles is applying best-in-class data science and machine learning technology to turn this fragmented public sector data into a knowledge base that gives stakeholders the information and the tools to deliver the maximum value on public contracts. This Innovate UK project will develop the tools to deliver potential suppliers with increasingly relevant leading indicators, enabling them to proactively engage with buyers and to allow buyers to quickly and accurately assess supplier fit. Solving this structural challenge will unlock public-sector opportunities and value chains for new suppliers and SMEs, and empower buyers to deliver better public services and value-for-money to taxpayers.