The National Audit Office has urged further education
colleges to make more use of e-procurement as part of improving
their purchasing.
England’s 384 FE colleges spend £1.6bn a year on goods and
services, but many need to improve their processes substantially,
the government spending watchdog said in its report, Improving
procurement in further education colleges in England.
It recommended that colleges review their existing mix of
procurement methods against good practice benchmarks, noting,
“Colleges’ general awareness of methods such as e-procurement is
reasonably high, but awareness of the possible extent of use, and
actual use of the methods, is low,” the report says.
The NAO found that 40% of colleges said they used e-procurement.
But when the auditors explored its use during college visits, “we
found that in practice it might amount only to occasional purchases
on the web, rather than regular, planned use of e-procurement”, the
report says.
Colleges’ procurement was also suffering because of poor
management information, the NAO found. The report says:
“Three-quarters of colleges responding to our survey did not
provide any information on their spending for the categories in our
survey.”
Colleges should review their data on procurement and how it can
be better analysed to provide useful management information, the
NAO recommended.