New Zealand ‘CIPS’ Strategic Procurement Forum opening address: Excerpts
Hon Lianne Dalziel
Minister of Commerce
SkyCity Convention Centre , Auckland
Good morning. It is a pleasure as Minister of Commerce to welcome everyone to this, the first New Zealand Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply CIPS Conference.
I accepted the invitation to do so, in order to say how pleased I am that New Zealand now has its own branch of CIPS, and how important that is to the government’s agenda both in terms of procurement generally and in terms of sustainability in particular. Linking New Zealand procurement practitioners into a global community of over 42,000 members in 120 countries has got to be good for the profession…..
Key priorities for the group this year include incorporating sustainability principles into the government procurement policy and extending the scope of this policy beyond core departments….
To guide the application of sustainability principles, a national sustainable procurement framework leveraging off best-practice initiatives overseas is being developed. This framework will help provide consistency across government and guide the implementation of initiatives that relate to sustainable procurement.
Sustainable procurement is one of a package of six projects developed in the context of the governments aim to make New Zealand the first truly sustainable nation, and the need for long term sustainability strategies to meet the challenges New Zealand faces in the 21st century….
the project that will be of particular interest is enhanced sustainable procurement. This is again led by the Ministry of Economic Development. It builds on progress made by the Ministry for the Environments Govt3 programme in achieving the necessary cultural change within the public sector to recognise and embed sustainability factors in procurement decisions.As well as integrating sustainability into a single government procurement policy and implementing a national framework for sustainable procurement, this project involves setting standards for sustainable procurement; developing sustainability performance indicators, targets and reporting mechanisms; and implementing a carbon costing methodology for procurement decisions.
By September this year specific standards will be mandated across public service departments. These include: paper (including recycled content and default duplexing); timber and wood products (to ensure they are legally sourced); travel (for motor vehicles and air travel versus video conferencing); and light fittings (for energy efficiency). These will be rolled out to the wider state sector over longer timeframes. A wider range of sustainability standards will be developed over time targeting areas of greatest impact, such as buildings, ICT equipment, white goods, textiles, uniforms and cleaning products.
The Ministry of Economic Development will work closely with the Ministry for the Environment, the State Services Commission, and the Treasury to develop sustainable procurement key performance indicators and targets for inclusion in agency performance agreements….
We know that building capability is critical for the successful implementation of the new single procurement policy and creating a shared understanding of sustainable procurement across the wider state sector. Adoption of the existing government procurement policy has not been as fast as we would like, and adherence to it has been somewhat patchy, largely as a result of the variation in procurement practice and capability amongst departments.
The Government Procurement Development Group understands the need to attract and retain procurement professionals and raise their professional status. The Group is working closely with CIPS as the peak procurement professional body for New Zealand procurement practitioners and professionals. It also endorses the MCIPS International Standard as a certification level that procurement practitioners will be encouraged to aspire to….
I hope you get a lot out of today’s forum and I look forward to seeing the results of your determination to lift the bar when it comes to sustainable government procurement.
Full transcript of the speech available at: