Development of the Firesouls platform - an online, closed bid Social Value auction

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Firesouls aims to provide all UK government organisations with a software-as-a-service(SaaS) auction platform that generates new resources for local communities.It does this by applying the Social Value Act to government procurement. Under law,government suppliers can be obliged to create extra community benefits as part of theprocurement process. The Firesouls platform provides a means of both maximising thebenefits for communities while at the same time keeping the supplier contract viable.Currently, take up and application of the Social Value Act has been low. For example, only15% of local councils have developed an approach. Those that have tend to evaluate on acontract by contract basis to generate community benefits This is labour intensive, costly andinefficient. The Firesouls platform offers an online, automated auction platform that bothtakes the pain away from government procurement teams, and allows market forces - throughmatching 'Social Value buyers and sellers' - to determine the proper amount of communitybenefit to be drawn from government contracts.At a time of severe public spending cuts and growing demand for local public services,Firesouls offers a way to generate new resources for local communities, year on year. We alsoallow suppliers to focus on delivering the contract - we ask suppliers to give the resources tolocal communities to create Social Value, rather than the suppliers doing it themselves. Ourargument is that suppliers should supply government services, local community organisationsshould deliver Social Value - they just need the resources to do it.