Pretoria - Chief Procurement Officer Kenneth Brown has commended the commitment shown by public officials to deal with challenges facing procurement.
Speaking at the Wits Business School on Wednesday evening, Brown said since it was established, his office has been inundated by calls from accounting officers from across the public service, who wanted to know more about procurement.
“There is a great will from accounting officers and I think people are starting to see the value of running their departments like businesses.”
He said some of the accounting officers have contacted his office already, wanting to know more about procurement.
“Some of them are already calling us and we relate procurement processes to their business.”
He cited an example of a recent discussion with the National Commissioner of Police about using technology to improve the procurement of police vehicles.
“So far, there are those ad-hoc conversations that I’ve had with some of them that are stimulating them already on dealing with issues around procurement.”
Brown said his office is planning a five-day intensive training, targeting accounting officers in the public service.
“We are looking at an executive programme which should not last for more than five days that focus on the strategic importance of procurement targeting accounting officers in the public service,” he explained.
He added that discussions were already underway with different institutions of higher leaning on the content of the programme.
“We are going to have that training in September because we are interacting with different tertiary institutions on the curriculum and how we want to tackle it.”
He added that procurement was still facing a lot of challenges. From non-compliance, lack of transparency, working in silos are some of the challenges the public service needs to deal with. – SAnews.gov.za
