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Transforming Local Government: Assisting Authorities with Contract Management and Market Engagement

10 May 2024
This articles provides a summary of the Local Government Association's guidance for local authorities relating to contract definitions and management, market engagement and managing your procurements.

Earlier this year, The Local Government Association (LGA), as part of the Transformation Capability Framework, published two documents designed to assist local authorities in identifying the capabilities required to deliver sustainable and effective transformation.

The Transformation Capability Framework has been created to assist transformation professionals and senior leaders in local government to understand their existing capabilities and forecast future workforce needs to enable councils to achieve their aims.

Released earlier this year, the documents complement the existing commissioning and contracts transformation maturity index which facilitates the identification of contract maturity and target project dates by local authorities.

The first document, titled "Procurement and Commissioning: Defining and managing contracts" sets out the relevant skills required to manage the lifecycle of a contract which includes definitions within contract documents, negotiations, creation of an on-boarding process and plan, monitoring contract performance and risks, resolving conflicts, managing change controls and managing transitions to new suppliers. 

The second document, titled "Procurement and Commissioning: Engaging the market" provides a useful guide regarding market engagement when running a procurement, listing the relevant skills required by local authority staff. Such skills include being able to research and evaluate routes to market, understanding evaluation criteria and pricing models, developing a procurement project plan, identifying and engaging with stakeholders, applying project management techniques to manage the procurement process, collaborating and communicating with key stakeholders and managing risk.

It is prudent for local authorities to review their processes in light of this guidance. Authorities should focus on contract management processes, their market engagement and the conduct of their procurement exercises. The aim is to identify the authority's needs and to see how they can best deliver on their objectives. 

We would like to thank Claira Rodden for her contribution to this article.

Further Reading