In the press this past week we see that the UK Government will make the process of procurement fairer and easier. It has long been obvious that outsourcing deals in the public sector have almost exclusively been awarded to large outsourcing providers, as they are the only ones that can afford to undertake the exhaustive tender process.

Even though thorough consideration of all providers and a complete background review must be conducted in any outsourcing process, the amount of public sector red tape that must be tackled by service providers often hinders smaller specialised business, leaving just a select few, usually large firms, to tender.

This also means that suppliers who are investing such time and money in the tendering process will be inclined to agree to SLAs that may not be cost-effective in the long run just to ensure they secure the contract and recoup some of their tendering costs. This inevitably leads to outsourcing disaster and ultimately costs both parties.

In short, introducing a fairer and accessible tendering process coupled with good procurement procedures may be a crucial key to ensuring future successful outsourcing deals within the public sector.