Most people, even business people, have never heard of public sector procurement, so have no idea what it is. Yet it is something that takes place on a daily basis and has a significant effect on everyone. Public sector procurement is the process by which government agencies, which serve us all, source and buy the products and services they need to run the services they provide for us. Until fairly recently it was a process that was shrouded in mystery and something that few people were aware of or understood. However, the level of cuts in public services needed to deal with the huge deficit the UK has turned the spotlight on many aspects of government services including the way in which procurement is carried out. Why Public Sector Procurement Affects Us All How the items and services needed to run a public service are procured matters to us all. The key reason is that how procurement is carried out has a huge impact on how much it costs to run each public service. A simple example would be how much is paid for a ream of paper. If a government department pays 10p more for a ream of paper than necessary this may seem relatively unimportant, however if that government department uses 500,000 reams of paper per year they are effectively wasting £50,000 worth of public money every year. The money they have wasted on paper cannot be spent on providing services unless, of course, people are asked to pay extra tax to cover the additional expense. If every government department wastes money in the same way you can see the devastating impact this has. That is why public sector procurement is heavily regulated. For those who are responsible for procuring goods for the public sector this makes life quite complicated. The government recognised this and came up with a scheme called GPC which stands for Government Procurement Card. This streamlines the process of procurement freeing up those responsible for public procurement to shop around more and find better value for money for the tax payer when they buy goods for the public sector. Argos For Business specialises in providing a

public sector procurementservice. They accept the GPC card at every branch and online as well as at Homebase.