Image: Brenda Gottsabend
Those of you with a wide and varied level of experience in government procurement, this might be your big break.
The New South Wales government is on the hunt for a Chief Procurement Officer under the Department of Finance, Services and Innovation to head up the state government’s ambitious new purchasing strategy that’s meant to “transform procurement across whole of state government”.
In the role, the successful candidate will shoulder the responsibility of a $20 billion procurement spend on goods and services across whole of government, but also a massive new strategic overhaul in procurement under the Coalition government.
In this new approach, the government claims that the agency is “evolving” from ‘traditional transactional procurement’ to a ‘strategic category management’ focus.
This means that the government is moving toward a new approach that organises resources to focus on specific areas of spends.
According to the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS), “this enables category managers to focus their time and conduct in depth market analysis to fully leverage their procurement decisions on behalf of the whole organisation”.
“The results can be significantly greater than traditional transactional based purchasing methods”, the CIPS website says.
The job ad for the role says that the NSW Chief Procurement Officer is a critical appointment that requires a highly commercial leader to work across government to drive a procurement function that is strategic, innovative and commercial in approach.
The pressure will be on this candidate to “bring a broad range of approaches to innovation”, “lead all aspects of NSW Procurement operations”, and “inspire, lead and enhance” the existing team.
As the government moves to roll out new technological integrations and innovations across the state, including new Service NSW shopfronts, better transport and infrastructure, a more robust education system, and more effective law enforcement, the focus will new be on the state’s high ranking purchasing experts to bring in the latest goods and services from the private sector to ensure that it happens smoothly.
With a new purchasing leader at the helm, under the watch of Minister for Finance Dominic Perrottet, the government’s has publicly laid its path for an optimistic future in bringing the public and private sectors together to ensure better collaboration and more far reaching results.
Submissions for the role end on 29th March, 2016, so you’ll want to get cracking on writing up your selection criteria if you can find the time.
