SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, it's Dustin Lanier. Thanks for listening. Please find me on LinkedIn for original public sector operations content every week. And please reach out to me if I and my team of procurement professionals at Civic Initiatives can help you be a public procurement change agent. Okay, I'm getting to talk today to Catherine Frauscher with the Open Contracting Partnership. They have a lot of interesting things they're doing globally on creating public procurement reform. And I'm excited to get to spend some time with you. So Catherine, why don't you introduce yourself and you can go ahead and introduce OCP just at a high level and we'll dig into some questions.

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

Awesome. Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here. I'm Catherine. I'm with the Open Contracting Partnership. It's always a lot of fun for us to talk to people who think procurement is fun and believe in the power of procurement. You know, there are not so many of us in the US or around the world. So I'm very glad to be here with Dustin and have some people listen and hopefully interact with us to talk more about procurement. So we are a global mission-driven nonprofit. We work both domestically in the United States and also abroad. Our mission is really to transform the trillions of dollars that are being spent on public contracts to better serve the people and protect the planet. We have an audacious goal, which is that by 2030, we want that one billion people live in more equitable and sustainable communities. And you might say, that's crazy. You know, how would you ever do that by improving procurement? But hear me out, it's not as insane as it sounds, because globally we know that governments spend$13 trillion every year through public procurement. So in many countries around the world, a third of the GDP goes through public procurement. In the United States, at the federal level, I think many people here will know that it's$750 billion. And if you aggregate all the local governments, it's even more, it goes up to 1.5 trillion annually. So if you think what you could do with that that money, if it's better spent, if you use it to solve problems and deliver better outcomes, better roads, more school books, lower prices for medicines, it can really make a huge difference. And we think that's how we as OCP can improve the lives of one billion people over the next six years. And that's really what we do. Our bread and butter is helping governments reimagine how government works. turn it from this overlooked, underfunded, bureaucratic function into a digital service that's data-driven and that can be an engine for innovation and economic inclusion and sustainability. And I know you and many of your partners, they believe in this too and work on a similar goal here in the United States. So I'm very glad to be here and talk more about that.

SPEAKER_00: 3:09

In my article, I mentioned that you guys are in 50 countries. How do you establish your basis of operation and where do you find the most impact on where you guys are working?

SPEAKER_01: 3:21

Yeah, wonderful. We mean we have the luxury of really working all over the world because, you know, everyone does procurement and procurement can be that engine for change everywhere around the world. And it can do so in highly developed or also in less developed countries. So one of our bigger portfolios is in the Latin America region where they have in many of those countries invested always more in data and in procurement infrastructure, quite different to perhaps here in the United States. So some of the biggest impact and some of our most exciting stories come from countries such as Colombia, Paraguay, Chile, and other places. We also work in Africa where it's a very different situation, but they are, I mentioned before, some countries spend up to a third of their GDP through public procurement. And that is absolutely the case, you know, in many places. If you think about Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, where we also work. In Asia, we are especially active in places like Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. And then not to forget Europe, which is a really interesting marketplace if you think about the European Union and how much is done there collectively across the countries and what the spend power of procurement there is um which is also yeah a really interesting market to follow

SPEAKER_00: 4:54

let's get specific on what you're doing with open government and open data and transparency so what are some of the ways that you both help create openness in public procurement and you know how does that lead to better outcomes

SPEAKER_01: 5:09

yeah i'm happy to chat about that and afterwards would love hear what you know where you see openness in your work and um emerge that in in which cities and places um you know we're the open contracting partnership so open is in our name and with open we really mean uh two things it's both the transparency piece and i'm happy to chat about that um in a moment but it also is the participation piece right and i think some ways that is more obvious to people because obviously procurement is buying often from vendors and that's where the participation really matters in terms of market engagement market research market innovation but we shouldn't forget the residents right we are seeing all over the world that in the end procurement serves the people and there are huge opportunities and advantages for involving people in procurement, both in deciding what you want to buy, how you buy it, how it's evaluated, but also then is it actually being delivered. On the transparency side, we are big believers in data. And even here in the United States, governments often don't know what they're buying, from whom they're buying, at what price they're buying. Different buyers might buy the same thing at a different price from the same vendor, and the vendor knows that, but the government doesn't know that. And we love that mantra, you can't manage what you can't measure. And that's definitely true in procurement. It's really hard to say that my goal is to spend more with historically disadvantaged businesses or to reduce CO2 emissions, but then you actually can't measure anything. And in addition to believing in the data piece, then we really believe in the open data piece, right? Because there's a difference, you know, a government might have the data, but they might not share that data, both with the marketplace or coming back to the residents. And we have seen, you know, over and over again, the business case for opening up your data, because if you open up your forecasting, right, if you're opening up a past awards and RFPs, vendors will give you better proposals, more vendors will start participating because they can anticipate the needs of the procuring agencies and adjust to that. So that's why we invest in data and work with different cities and countries on that data piece. In US, slowly, slowly, there are more open data. It's still not that many in procurement like you see in other places. But New York now publishes planning data. We worked with Des Moines. And they, for the first time now, have an e-betting platform that offers more data. And they were able to increase the participation of local businesses. Award data is usually what you find the easiest, but we can see that if you also add planning data or payment data, that the value add from it is really strong. But you do some of that work

SPEAKER_00: 8:19

around

SPEAKER_01: 8:20

the US as well. Who is more data driven in your work around here?

SPEAKER_00: 8:24

Well, that's a good question. Let me first kind of hit a point that I was going to take off where you went, and then I'll talk about where I think some of them sit. And so you're talking about two different aspects that have a growing or self-cycling effect. How can procurement shops get better understanding of the spend in order to not just manage the transactions, but really be thoughtful about treating spend management as the characteristic and the biggest differentiator between a shop that is very transactional and one that is really seeking to do category management and other things that would mark a more strategic approach is the access to data, the knowledge of what to do with the data, and then the time to do something with the data. It's one of my common cliches in this business that I've never been in a procurement shop that wasn't busy, but I've been in several that weren't set up to be able to be strategic. So you can have a a shop that is insanely busy but they're not able to get a front in front of the wave because they haven't been set up with data so i think you know making sure that is clean enough to be able to actually make determinations that things are in the right category with the data saying well how does that affect my sourcing approach like why what am i doing with the data that helps me make a better decision to hit some of the principles so that's that's level one is making sure that procurement shops are both equipped with good information and then why they need that information as as opposed to just managing the transactions that are coming through and then if you do have good data being able to publish that out to to both be good stewards and to be good taxpayer representatives, but to your point, also to help the vendors plan. You asked who does a good job. So I used to work at the Texas CIO shop, which is called DIR. They have a pretty intricate process by which they're anticipating the events that are gonna come, what's in play, what's in work. And that's always been very helpful. to not just have it be a huge guessing game, because sometimes you have to take time to assemble teams. NASPO, the state procurement officers, they do a good job of publishing when they're going to come out and what they're going to do. So I think that both understanding that data can drive more effective use of the procurement shop and a better tie to our role as public stewards, I think is a laudable goal all over the globe.

SPEAKER_01: 10:50

100%. I love that distinction between... being busy and being strategic. And I think we often come back to that. And it's an overused word maybe, but it does come down to the culture of procurement, right? And why do you do procurement and for what purpose? And I love the example that you shared. If it's value aligned, right? If you actually have a vision for your city or your county or your state, and you're using procurement and procurement data to implement that vision right that's when we see a lot of things go go really well and a very different approach to procurement that's then not just about exactly like you say being busy but trying to lift that vision through your purchasing

SPEAKER_00: 11:38

and there's nothing wrong with being busy and i don't want to in any way say that people who are in that super busy mode somehow are not being effective but If we are moving sand a thimble at a time because we haven't set up to be able to run it in a different way, we can be incredibly busy, but not necessarily making a big dent in the pile of sand that has to be moved. So of course, where I came to notice you guys and started following some of your content and then eventually we connected in order to talk was just some of the really interesting case studies that you guys are publishing globally. Of course, as you said, procurement is a pretty universal beating heart of government all around. the world, and we get used to some expectations about what procurement means generally within the U.S., and there's going to be variations between states, but generally it's all coming off of that ABA code from the 70s that established the procurement code that almost all procurement shops at least started from there, so there's at least general commonality among public procurement in the U.S., but when you're publishing stories about opening things up and Uruguay and Africa and all kinds of places, it caught my attention. So is there one or two things that you think are some of the better success stories of involvement or things where you really saw a transformational effect in one of your global examples?

SPEAKER_01: 13:14

Yeah, I'm happy to share a few. So we run a program that we call our Impact Accelerator Lift, and it's a competitive program, but we try to find these teams that we just talked about, you know, that have this strategic vision, and they want to do procurement differently. But we know that it can be really hard, right, to go from the way you always have done it to do it differently, and you kind of need a bit of a political coverage and mandate to be able to go and implement some of those changes. So lift, you know, allows teams of government reformers to do that over a period of about two years. And we have supported 22 lift teams in the last years in 17 different countries. And I think one of the teams that has been incredibly successful and it's, I think, a relevant example for here in the United States is Paraguay, which is in Latin America. And just to tell you kind of the challenge that they were facing is that 95 of the market in paraguay is made up of small businesses but they only used to win less than 10 of the contracts so only 10 of the public um procurement marketplace went to them and they realized right that they are leaving um huge benefits there at the table and um how much economic inclusion and wealth they could generate if they were able to spend more with those SMEs. They did a range of things in order to be able to improve that. One of the things they did is they simplified the bidding process, which, like you said, the code here in America and some of these processes, it's also not the most engaging, not the most user-friendly. It makes you go through many hurdles to register as a vendor or to submit a bid. So they were able to simplify all of that. And then one thing that they built, and we see this here more in the United States is a very user-friendly platform that helped them to find more opportunities that are right for SMEs. And then they did a lot of outreach, right? Which we think is always still something that many governments can get better at because they just expect everyone to come to them, but they don't go out there to the market and say, Hey, come and work for us, right? Just like an employer would do. So in Paraguay, they were able to do all of those things because it's usually not just one thing that you need to do, right? To get some of these really impressive results. But now, they see a 60% increase of the businesses that are participating in public procurement. And that can also make a huge difference for the SMEs themselves in terms of being able to generate more revenue. And it's aligned with the Paraguayan policies and vision of what kind of country they want to be. So we think that is a really nice case study. And we know that here in the US, we work with the city of Boston, the city of Portland, the city of Newark. And there are many cities here that really want to increase their spend with historically disadvantaged businesses, local businesses, green businesses. And there's a lot here that we can learn from these kind of examples.

SPEAKER_00: 16:38

Well, there's absolutely a market-making capacity for procurement. I've often kind of differentiated from purchasing, which is the activity of assembling requisitions and rationalizing them with contracts and establishing POs. And again, there's a lot of honor in purchasing, but purchasing is then surrounded by a broader procurement function, which then says, how are we making this be a strategic asset and what are we doing to facilitate that and certainly understanding what are the goals and expectations that have been set by the policymakers and how do we fulfill that through our actions while still being a fair arbiter and certainly one of the actions that comes up a lot is um is increasing Local spend, well, first of all, you have to understand how to quantify that and how to track that as a benchmark. And then secondly, you have to understand that there is a market maker relationship that you can have and that is appropriate for procurement to have because it establishes a broad competitive vendor base. So if we're trying to get to people who maybe have never had a government contract before, we probably have to pitch it. We probably have to position it and we have to create opportunities. Texas, again, I sound like we only do business in Texas. It's just Texas has some good examples, right? Texas has this history of setting up historically underutilized business job fairs where they will do spot awards on the spot in the conference. So they list out spot awards that they will make available at the conference for people who attend who are underutilized or maybe they haven't even ever received a thing before so that people can actually leave with a first contract, which is a really fascinating way to handle There's also they're active on how to connect experienced primes with subcontractors. Great way to build venture protege type relationships. Lots of things procurement can do to do market making. Any other concepts that come up about market making and using data to drive goals?

SPEAKER_01: 18:43

Yeah, I mean, just want to say I love that story. Yeah. i hadn't heard about the spot award so that that's great i i would love to know more about that because to be able to award a contract on the spot that is pretty innovative in procurement so that's great i would love to read more about that um no i think the market making um also innovation making is an incredibly important function of um of procurement and you know we wanted to chat a bit about sustainability as well you know we said It's Earth Day this week. And if you think about the potential that procurement has in terms of helping with climate mitigation and adaptation and really shape innovation and progress here, I think it's huge. So the examples that you just mentioned are important. They are small, but procurement can do that, right? With very innovative products at a very large scale as well. And I think... given the climate crisis that we are all facing. But I think thinking about how procurement can do that in the climate space is incredibly important. So we have seen that a bit, for example, in Mexico City, which, you know, in other places would be a whole country because many people live in Mexico City. They were they wanted to renew their bike share program. But they were working with us, and they wanted to do it differently this time and be able to attract a different type of vendor that might have not worked before in the city. And they used better market research and user research to really procure a service versus a product and think about the goals that they had, which included reducing CO2 emissions, increasing ridership by women, and in... neighborhoods further from the center. And the way they set up the planning process, and again, like we said in the beginning, shared some of that information with the market, encouraged matchmaking, just you like said, between a prime and a subcontractor, they were able not only to spend less, but get a better coalition of vendors together to deliver a much better bike share program in Mexico City that is anticipated to cut CO2 emissions. I think just today we saw a statistic that, can't remember now if I got that right, but I think 30 or 40% more women now use the bikes because the bikes are, set up to also be written by women in an easier way and that you know the benefits of that that it makes a city more livable more greener more fun and procurement made that happen right i think that's pretty awesome

SPEAKER_00: 21:27

that is awesome yeah that's a great story um well um so so tell me about the uh this the open data standard that you guys work on like what tell me more about this ocds and how does it actually kind of influence or drive as a cornerstone of what the work is.

SPEAKER_01: 21:47

Yeah. I mean, we already talked a little bit about data and made the pitch of why we, you and I, think data is that important. When we started open contracting and the partnership, we realized that there is really no standard out there that tells you what are some of the more important data fields and how would you structure and organize your data so that they become more useful and so that the quality gets higher. And that's really what the Open Contracting Data Standard is about. It's a best practice standard that helps you to understand what information to publish at what stage of the procurement and it really goes back to the purpose right so if your goal is to spend more with local businesses if your goal is to increase efficiency or you know like we said before know how much you're spending with green vendors the ocds will help you calculate these KPIs in a much more easy and mainstream way, because it organizes your data by the most important fields that you need to calculate those KPIs. So around the world, you know, I think about 60 countries or publishers, we have about 60 publishers of the OCDS in that many different countries, and they use the data to be able to calculate KPIs that matter for their strategic functioning of procurement. Yeah, which also made me wonder, you know, like you have worked in so many different places. What are some of the most important KPIs that you see governments pay attention to? Is it, you know, award and spend or are some others sneaking in there that people are paying more attention to?

SPEAKER_00: 23:43

Well, thanks for the softball. I have to hit it, right? We do a lot of KPI work and over a decade of doing this, we have really tried to drive in kind of the following structure that there are three guiding principles that we advocate for procurement shops. So efficiency, how are we helping get the work of our departments done in a timely manner because they have priorities they're supposed to hit. quality while we're doing that, that we're trying to drive good outcomes, good terms, good pricing, good negotiation, highest value, and then stewardship, which is we're performing work with public dollars, not private dollars. And so we have to be able to act in a way where if we were demonstrating in the sunshine all that we were doing, it would meet the expectations of our policymakers and of our citizens. So within those three guiding principles, then we've established about 15 KPIs that we think are relevant indicators in efficiency, quality, stewardship. And then almost all of those, we then also have a relationship with the Hackett Group, who is a global benchmarker. And so for the vast majority of those benchmarks where private sector markers can also inform public sector, we're able to measure and then compare against global private partners. And then we're building out a series of public sector partners to extend and expand that database to a public sector cohort. So that's our overall process. I'm interested in learning more about the benchmarks that you've established. I think the important thing for public procurement when establishing benchmarks is you have to pick a few things that you want to say, I want to quantitatively measure this and it ties up to how I communicate what I do and why it's important. And then try to find things that are going to be able to be sustained centers of knowledge for a long period of time so i am interested in comparing some notes with you a little bit more on what kind of benchmarks are driven by your standard and some of the work that we're doing and seeing maybe we can collaborate more on some of that

SPEAKER_01: 25:48

yeah absolutely and um I think one struggle that we see, including here in the US, is that these government teams have enough capacity to be able to do data work. Procurement teams around the US are very understaffed and underfunded. that common to find a government that actually has a data team and can go and do some of that work because initially it does take a bit of work, right? To be able to tag the different, you know, purchases, the vendors and connect all of the data. But exactly like you said, it's hard to make you're spending and purchasing a strategic function if you actually don't know in which direction you are heading. And yes, we see a lot of competition is definitely a key one that we measure. Participation of historically disadvantaged businesses is another one. Around the world, we focus a lot on integrity. Red flags for what could be corruption is definitely something also that we work on a lot. I mean, technology is helping a lot here, right? There's so much more that governments can do now once you have the data in terms of using business intelligence tools that it used to be, right? Companies use them, but they can make a huge difference in government business as well.

SPEAKER_00: 27:15

You used the phrase corruption in there. I was actually going to ask about procurement reform because in the US, when we talk about procurement reform, we're often talking about things like making the governance processes be more logical or removing some things that make it impossible to do work but i mean when we're talking on a global basis procurement reform may well be we need to reduce true corruption kind of situations or actually make it so that more stuff is solicited as opposed to sent through a non-competitive situation so i mean how do you what are some of the challenges that you guys deal with when you're in a place where maybe somebody who is doing procurement reform is doing some really heavy lift i would imagine and like what are some of the challenges that they have to overcome in order to accomplish that

SPEAKER_01: 28:02

oh yeah absolutely i mean globally you know procurement is still one of the biggest drivers and biggest um causes of corruption right a lot of corruption happens um in procurement so um that is definitely something we work on heavily in in many of the countries and I hinted at that before, you know, procurement and politics in many ways are heavily linked. You need a political mandate to really reform procurement, but there's also many politicians who benefit through procurement, right, personally, and their families do and their companies do. So one thing that you can't forget when you are engaging in a systemic procurement reform is that you are often fighting against corruption, against big power, against vested interests. There are companies who maybe in the past have always won, right? Because it was not a fair process and now others might be able to enter the market. So those are not easy things to do, but people have done them over and over again. And, you know, we would, they have to say that you can't really fight corruption without cleaning up your procurement.

SPEAKER_00: 29:21

So tell me about OCP as a, as an organization, like how are you guys set up and are you, are you putting people actually into the field and or how are you, deciding what resources that you use in order to run this and how are you set up to try to attack this very large mission you've set out for yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 29:40

Yeah, so we, I mean, we are a global team. So most of us are actually not in the United States. We really, our teams are where the action is, right? They are from the countries, they live in the countries where we see some of these innovation and reforms happening. So we have people in Chile, in Paraguay, in Colombia, in Uganda, in Mauritius, in Thailand, in Europe, you know, in multiple places in Europe. And we think that is really important, right? Because procurement, like we said now a few times, is rooted in your country context, in your history, right? It has evolved a certain way. And it's important to be close to that. We also like therefore to work you know in the languages that people speak with the knowledge of the region and the actual countries um so we are spread out we are a fully decentralized global team that works around the world um in in many different countries and in many different languages and we really try to go where the action is right we try to balance um various the greatest need with the greatest opportunity, we decide where we work a lot on what the capacity and the political appetite for reform is. Also understanding that sometimes you need to build towards that, because it's not something that happens from today to tomorrow, but that has allowed us to see progress in some, unexpected places and countries. I mean, one that's maybe on everyone's mind in the United States as well as Ukraine. So we have been working on Ukraine for many, many years. We started there after the Maiden Revolution. And if I can tell one more unusual procurement story is it was really that At that point, many people were living outside of Ukraine, but after Maiden Revolution, they decided to come back, especially to Kiev, the capital city. And because corruption was such a problem, some of these people dedicated the next three to five years of their lives to building a procurement system that was fully digitized centered around people and business uh fully transparent and they called it prozorro which is you know transparency and they have seen incredible results in terms of um fighting corruption awarding much more spending to smes and now you know the the the crazy thing is that um during the war, they have continued to build on it. You know, they are able to tag what they're procuring for war with a tag that's war. So they know exactly how much they're spending and procuring during the war. So we were talking to some other people about that the other day. I think often, you know, we like to COVID, right? You build something in an emergency And then you see that it works really well and you keep using it after the emergency. But, you know, Ukraine is one of the few examples that built something that also worked during emergency and they are continuing to build on it. And I think that's a really powerful story that if you invest into your procurement systems that, you know, you can not only sustain a war, but you can keep building and growing during it.

SPEAKER_00: 33:06

Wow. Wow. That's interesting. So, I mean, with all of that different kinds of work and opportunity. How do you define success for yourself and for the organization in terms of either non-temporally or in the next year or so? What do you think is the major things that mark whether you know that you're succeeding in this mission that you guys have drawn for yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 33:33

Yeah, so like I said at the very beginning when we started talking, we set ourselves, you know, some really audacious targets of where we want to get to in the next six years. And it's unusual, you know, maybe to associate procurement with saying we want one billion people to live in more equitable, prosperous and sustainable communities. But that is really our goal, right? And we are measuring that of how much progress we are making along the way. It's indeed a little hard to aggregate procurement results across countries because increasing competition or spend in one place, you can't just add it all up across so many different contexts and make it meaningful. But seeing how that benefits people across the countries and across the contexts, that is a way of seeing that more and more people around the world are seeing procurement as a strategic function right and are using it for purpose versus you know a pure compliance function and that is really um what we're all all about and what we're excited about um here in the us you know we are very excited to work with the three cities that i mentioned before new york portland and boston and um showing what's possible if you really do some of the systemic reforms um we are also doing um some really other interesting work in terms of seeing what else is needed to change the system. You might have seen that a little while ago, we are starting a new research project that could make procurement technology itself much more effective and human-centered and innovative. We do think that our current procurement technology is not quite in 2024, where it could be. Sometimes, you know, so it's like having a fax machine and trying to run, you know, 2024 on it. And what we need is a little, should be much more agile and human centered. So that's something that we are also really excited about to work on here in the United States.

SPEAKER_00: 35:46

So you mentioned a global team and you mentioned three cities that you're working on in the US. And I know that you are working looking to expand some of your capacity to operate here in the US. So people who either are listening to this live or afterwards, they might be some of your target audience. So what kind of position do you have out there and what are you looking for?

SPEAKER_01: 36:07

Yeah, come and work for us. We are a fun team that's very, as you can tell, passionate and mission driven about procurement. It actually and really gets us excited to work on this. So I don't know. I think if you enjoyed what you and I here were talking about right now, if you believe in this power of procurement, that procurement can change how governments delivers for the people, if you have built a successful initiative or program before, I think this is one of the most exciting positions out there that's at this intersection of social impact, government, and technology. We're looking for a director level, so a very senior position, right, that comes with a lot of opportunity and independence to shape our portfolio and pursue it. And like I said, we are a fun team. You can apply until May 3rd. So if you are interested or if you know a friend, a colleague who might be good, we would love to hear from them.

SPEAKER_00: 37:09

And I assume it's virtual since the rest of it's virtual. So it doesn't matter where somebody is as such, right?

SPEAKER_01: 37:16

That's right. They can be in the United States. Hopefully somewhere beautiful for them.

SPEAKER_00: 37:23

What have we not talked about that you want to talk about that has to do with your mission or things that, you know, a lot of people who listen to this or watch this are all you know, day-to-day US-based public procurement people. So what do you think about what you guys are doing that would be interesting that we haven't hit so far or something that you want to try to emphasize as we kind of come towards the end?

SPEAKER_01: 37:44

Yeah, thank you. I do think one interesting question that, you know, you and I had chatted about leading up to this, and I would love to hear your answer about it as well, is like, what's in the way of making this new way of procurement, of procurement with a purpose, open contracting, whatever you want to call it, the way and the only way of doing procurement. And that's something that we think a lot about. I do think one of the challenges that I mentioned is politics. I mean, procurement is not the topic that mayors, governors, usually want to invest that much in and it requires some of that investment to really get to a much better system and a culture change. But I wonder what else is there that makes it hard, right? Is it the legacy systems that we all deal with because procurement system were built over time and everyone built the vendor registration, the EGP, the payment system and now it all doesn't fit so well together anymore and no one has a good time having to use any of those systems. But I don't know, what do you think? What makes it hard to see this new way of procurement take scale?

SPEAKER_00: 39:03

Well, I think everyone is a remnant of how they were first created, right? And in small entities, they can go a long time if they wish without a procurement function as a professionalized function, right? They can have the business units, they can have, they will have finance and then finance can be perceived as being able to execute procurement for, you know, a long period of time until it's just becomes too much work. So I think that if you hadn't designed it really understanding that procurement is a professionalized function, And there's a lot of value that can happen in terms of developing sourcing strategy, considering alternatives, protecting us, of course, right? But getting good outcomes that procurement can then be viewed as a clerking function or something where, well, we did all the work already, right? Well, the business unit said what they needed and finance said they had the money. And so unless you have a dynamic leader in charge of procurement or visionary leadership in terms of someone who came out of an area where procurement was pretty strong or a finance person being able to acknowledge procurement as being its own professionalized thread that a lot of times then it's viewed that that procurement must be straightforward because we already did all the things so therefore just go do it with air quotes and then if there's issues or problems then procurement can sometimes be cast in the role of being the agents of no or the ones who are keeping something from happening and which further exacerbates the perception that procurement is clerking and it's at the end. And Melissa asked the question in here about how do we drive the change process with government officials and the thought process. To me, it's building the case that once you look at your budget and you take out depreciation and taxes and intergovernmental transfers and things, 95% of the rest of the money is going to go through some sort of a contract document, either through a procurement or through an existing contract. And really establishing that procurement can and should be a strategic asset if it is built that way and contemplated that way. And then if the people who are in procurement have never been given the opportunity to do anything more than chase it at the end, then we need to help teach them some new skills as far as what it means to be closer towards the front. So there is a process, I guess, of really trying to elevate procurement as a as a strategic participant in the process. I mean, some of the success stories that you listed there are great examples. We really, I think, try to establish that procurement will do two main things in this process. They're going to take Inventory, commodities, consumables, and things that can be locked in and gotten on the highest scale contract. That's like a core spend under management philosophy that says we want to get the spend that can be locked down in a way that then says for the things that are strategic to execute either completely new events or events for departments or whatever. what is the best way to go to market, to get our outcomes, to be a good partner for the vendor community and drive these things as professionalized events. And I mean, you can really tell the difference between shops that have been allowed to flourish in that culture and shops that never had that culture. What do you think? I mean, what do you see with that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_01: 42:43

No, a hundred percent. I couldn't agree more. Also, when you, when you talk in the beginning about the, the profession of procurement, right? I mean, no one in kindergarten says, I'm gonna be a procurement officer when I grow up, right? So there is something there about making procurement as a profession more attractive and having people go into procurement because they see as a way of making change happen, right? Because they see it as a way of achieving impact, right? As a way of doing public service and being able to deliver on your cities or states vision and value. So I think that, yes, I couldn't agree more with all of that you just said. Being able to get to that culture change, I think is key.

SPEAKER_00: 43:32

Well, I mean, there's two types of culture change that we just talked about, right? Like one is establishing with government leadership that procurement is not where things go to go slow. It's that if we aren't involving the people who have dedicated their lives to understanding how to go to market in a way that is both effective and compliant, right? That we are able to, within our compliance zone, bring the most innovative and effective markets. So I think elevating with leadership that procurement can and should be a strategic asset in their management tool. And then for individuals in procurement, helping to elevate them within understanding the span of what the job can be. And then I have a whole series of speeches that I do on how we talk about ourselves in procurement, how to not use the most common phrase in procurement, which is I fell into it, which is a self-diminishing language. And I literally have a keynote speech that I do on the topic about how to talk about ourselves in procurement and how to draw the next generation towards procurement. But yes, there's a lot about procurement that should attract people who are interested in change and impact towards the profession. And so hopefully globally, if you guys can you know, the message of let's bring change to impact our communities. You guys can probably be impactful on drawing, you know, new people into the profession. Is that a part of y'all's charge? Do you guys, is that, you know, how do you think about, you know, the future generations of people who will be in procurement? Is that part of your mandate in some way?

SPEAKER_01: 45:08

Absolutely. And yeah, I, I love what, what you just said about, you know, Indeed, many people that we encounter have fallen into procurement. The wonderful thing is they also often have fallen in love with procurement. There you go. Because once you're in it, you can actually see that you can be a changemaker and achieve that system change. Like you said, when you're given that permission to be allowed to flourish and to, like you said, within compliance, be able to do as much as you can versus... going by the same rule book over and over again. And yes, I mean, that's why we exist, right? To lift up that procurement can be that impact driver, that change maker, and that the people in the profession and the leaders around it, but also the residents in the United States or the citizens around it there, it's all of it coming together to deliver those better results.

SPEAKER_00: 46:11

Well, I really appreciate you taking some time and promoting, like I said, I, I do that five for Friday thing where I pull out some stories and some weeks are really easy and some weeks are a little harder to find something that can hit the five. But I always hit y'all's stuff because it's interesting to throw in a case study of here's how Mexico used procurement to change the way they're doing the bikes and et cetera. So I found you guys very interesting and only have found you more interesting as I've learned and communicated with you guys. So I hope that Maybe somebody from this will choose to apply in. Not my people, of course, but. Yes. Right. But but, you know, I think that you guys have a great mission and we're happy to continue to work with you guys and support you. And so thank you for jumping on and letting people learn about you today.

SPEAKER_01: 46:59

Yeah. Thank you so much. And, you know, shout out. I love the Friday five. I check them sometimes on Mondays. But they're awesome. I find a lot of interesting things there. You find really good nuggets about what's happening in the US.

SPEAKER_00: 47:12

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Well, thank you. Well, great. Okay. Well, we'll let people get back into their day and we appreciate the time. Thank you.