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Project details

The common actions project began on 1 April 2008 and will be completed by March 2011. Government Skills is working in collaboration with departments to ensure that the work meets their needs.

The project is governed by a project board with senior representatives from across departments, as well as representatives from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and their executive agency OGC Buying Solutions.

Objectives are to deliver four sorts of behaviour changes.

1. Departments and professions understand and embrace the value of common commissioning for common skills needs
2. Departments, consulting professions, jointly procure L&D services in a wide range of areas
3. Departments, consulting professions, jointly commission L&D services in critical skills areas
4. Departments and professions routinely share L&D services with each other

The project follows the two main forms of common action.

Common procurement

Common procurement covers departments:

• seeking L&D services from existing provision in other government departments
• sharing their own existing L&D services with other departments.

In the Skills Strategy, common procurement is included in the tactical-level recommendations for common action quick wins. We have already identified a number of tactical initiatives and are currently asking departments to identify further opportunities to share L&D services.

Common commissioning

Common commissioning involves a more strategic approach and there are two steps needed before it can take place. Government Skills is:

1. collecting data about current contracts across government – this not only informs common procurement (see above), but also helps select the skills areas suitable for Training Needs Analysis (TNA) (see step 2)
2. implementing a rolling programme of TNA – we are using a selection of departments for each skills area to identify specific common skills needs across a number of government departments.

At the end of each TNA the departments involved will work together to commission new L&D services in that skills area.