- Minister launches refreshed Wales Procurement Policy Statement (WPPS)
- Procurement regional events: Book your place
- eTrading Microsite
launches
- Meet the eProcurement
Stakeholder Relationship Manager
- Consultation on the Remedies Directive
- Improvements to Award notices on Sell2Wales
- Changes to eTenderwales: BravoSolution release
- Vacancies
 Last week, the Minister for Finance & Government Business
launched the refreshed Wales Procurement Policy Statement (WPPS) and confirmed
that Welsh Ministers will soon have new powers to regulate on public
procurement matters further strengthening the benefits to the economy.
The new regulatory powers for
Welsh Ministers are expected to come into force on 12 August and will be instrumental
in helping to strengthen the adoption of the refreshed Wales Procurement Policy
Statement. The first area for regulation is likely to be Community
Benefits.
The Minister originally
launched the Wales Procurement Policy Statement (WPPS) in December 2012,
setting out the nine principles by which public sector procurement was to be
delivered in Wales. The
refreshed Statement builds on the success to date, strengthening the principles
public bodies are expected to adopt and adding in a tenth principle relating to
Policy Development and Implementation.
Public bodies will now be required to submit annual returns to
the Welsh Government evidencing their engagement with the Statement and its
principles such as community benefits. Follow this link
for the full story.
We now have dates for the Procurement regional events. On the agenda will be the revised WPPS, the opportunities presented by Designation and the NPS forward pipeline and
Business Plan.
South Wales event - 3rd July: 09:30 - 13:00 (Waterton Centre, Bridgend)
North Wales event - 23rd July AM: 09:30 - 13:00 (Glasdir, Llanrwst)
To book your place, please email: Rebecca.Rees2@wales.gsi.gov.uk
eTrading
Wales is a centrally funded service which enables buyers and suppliers to
interact electronically for the supply and payment of goods and services. Value
Wales, has appointed Procserve to deliver the eTrading Wales service to all
National Procurement Service (NPS) member organisations.
To help you
along your eTrading Wales journey our microsite is now live. This is a one stop
shop for all the information about the programme. Here you will find further
information and self-help guides to assist you. We will be developing the
microsite and providing more resources to you as the programme develops but
check out the current pages.
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We have made
some changes to the organisation of the eProcurement Service programme team.
Helen Oliver
has taken on a new role as the Stakeholder Relationship Manager for the eProcurement
Service programme. Helen’s early focus
is on eTrading Wales and will be engaging with all in scope organisations over
the coming weeks and will be at the planned Contracts Directory workshop on 22nd
June. If you haven’t already started your eTrading journey and want to start
reaping the benefits of it, email Helen.Oliver@wales.gsi.gov.uk
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We will be putting alternative arrangements in place to backfill Helen’s work on eSourcing and will let you know when these have been implemented.
There are still places available on the Contracts Directory workshop on 22nd June, to book your place email Rebecca.Rees2@wales.gsi.gov.uk
The European Commission is running a consultation on the
Remedies Directive. It runs until 20 July and details can be found via the link.
If
you wish to respond, there is a questionnaire to complete via the above link, consisting
of 20 questions which you then submit directly back to the Commission. If you
are able to save a copy and share with us that would be much appreciated –
please send to VWPolicy@wales.gsi.gov.uk If you are
not able to, please can you let us know if you have responded for our records?
If
you have any queries on this e-mail VWPolicy@wales.gsi.gov.uk
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We have listened to your feedback and made improvements to Award notices on Sell2Wales.
Arrangements have been made to archive all 2013 non awarded contracts; this work will be carried out at the end of June and will appear in your next outstanding Awards reminder. We have taken these steps to alleviate the position where buyers have been unable to locate the supplier in order to complete an Award notice.
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It is important for us to be able to report the number / value
of Awards made to SMEs and in particular to Welsh SMEs. We have made enhancements
in Sell2Wales to motivate supplier registration making selection of the
‘supplier to award’ much easier.
Whilst we will not have addressed every eventuality, we
hope that you are already benefitting from the improvements. We now ask for
your continued support in making a concerted effort to get all post 2013 (regardless
of value) notices awarded.
The
eTenderwales BravoSolution release 12.4 is planned for Monday 29 June 2015 and
the attached document highlights the changes with the upgrade.
A YouTube
video, explaining these changes, will also be made available to all
eTenderwales users ahead of the 12.4 go live date. Details of this will be
published via email to all current users.
As with any
new release, it is important that users review the latest minimum technical
requirements to ensure they will remain fully compatible with the solution
after go-live.
Buyers can
easily check their own settings using this
link on the login page.
Please note
that with this release, BravoSolution have officially removed support for
Internet Explorer 8 (previously listed as ‘not recommended’), in line with
Microsoft’s original announcement that their support for older browser versions
would cease from 12 January 2016 onwards. Users who continue to use IE8 are
unlikely to see any adverse effects in this release (as the interactions with
the browser have not been significantly changed) however officially the use of
IE8 is not supported.
Microsoft are
now reviewing their policy on browser support and as such, BravoSolution will
remove all support in preparation for the planned User Interface upgrades
(currently planned for Q4 2015 or Q1 2016) which will not support IE8 at all. If you have
any further queries, please contact eProcurementService@wales.gsi.gov.uk
Contracts Officer, Grwp Gwalia (Ref EXE - 000962)
Salary: £28,506
Working Hours: Full
time. Permanent 35 Hours per week.
Location: Swansea
Details, contacts and
applications can be found on the Grwp Gwalia website.
Deadline for applications: 26 June 2015
For any queries relating to the VW Bulletin, including any
articles or to unsubsribe please email Rebecca.Rees2@wales.gsi.gov.uk.
If you would like to recieve this bulletin in Welsh please click here.
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