To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many schools took part in the pilot for the Online Procurement for Educational Needs system; how many orders were sent as part of the pilot; and what the cost of the system has been. (186970)

OPEN—the Online Procurement for Educational Needs system is the Department’s e-procurement tool for schools that has been developed with and for schools to aid them in procuring their goods and services in one convenient location should they wish to use it.

During the OPEN pathfinder phase, which when complete will have run for one year, a total of 463 schools from five areas of England generously took the time to support the development and functionality testing of the system:

A group of Devon schools;

East Sussex county council;

e-Spi, a north west based consortium, hosted by Rochdale metropolitan borough council; and

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

The aim of the pathfinder was to rigorously test the system for reliability, appropriateness, ease of use and integration with schools’ financial management systems.

During the period 15 March 2007 to 31 January 2008 a total of 630 orders were placed.

OPEN is a development of, and operates on, the Zanzibar public sector e-procurement solution operated by OGCbuying.solutions which is available to the whole of the UK public sector. OPEN is the schools portal to this e-marketplace.

The release of information relating to the amounts being paid to individual companies would prejudice commercial interests in this instance and could affect the Department’s future negotiating position.

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many invoices have been unsuccessfully submitted by schools under the electronic invoice system Online Procurement for Educational Needs. (186971)

OPEN—the Online Procurement for Educational Needs system—is the Department’s e-procurement tool for schools that has been developed with and for schools to aid them in procuring their goods and services in one convenient location should they wish to use it.

Schools do not submit invoices to OPEN, only fully authorised orders. Suppliers then receive the order via the supplier portal component of OPEN and can then raise an electronic invoice.

These invoices are currently sent to schools via email. The option to import these invoices directly to the schools’ financial management system is currently unavailable as part of the pathfinder phase, but the Department is in discussion with FMS providers regarding the integration of OPEN into future releases.

Currently, in order to ascertain the number of orders unsuccessfully raised by schools, every school registered on OPEN would need to be contacted with a list of orders they had raised through OPEN, asked to provide the invoice numbers relating to those orders and then have these queried against the supplier portal (the area where suppliers transact with schools) to establish which had been created electronically.

At this time, and with existing functionality, to capture information to this detail would be an unnecessary burden to schools in administrative time required to ensure that the data and cross checking are complete. Furthermore, this is not something that the pathfinder phase of OPEN intended to assess. However, EPC has been working with FMS providers regarding subsequent releases of their systems to facilitate upgrades that will allow a full audit trail for invoices.

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what the annual cost has been of his Department’s Purchasing Team for the Online Procurement for Educational Needs (OPEN) system; and how much has been paid to (a) PA Consulting and (b) Proc Serve to establish the OPEN system in the last three years. (186972)

OPEN—the Online Procurement for Educational Needs system is the Department’s e-procurement tool for schools that has been developed with and for schools to aid them in procuring their goods and services in one convenient location should they wish to use it.

Due to the complexity of the project, the development requirements of the system, and the number of schools that potentially may wish to avail of it, a decision was taken to fund OPEN for three years, up to 2011. This is within CSR07 financial period and is usual for programmes of this nature.

The OPEN system is based on the existing pan-Government platform Zanzibar which is provided by ProcServe. However, it was felt that this system would not be directly applicable to schools in its current format, hence the need to employ a consultancy with the specialist skills needed to support the development of this schools-focused solution.

The cost of the OPEN system to the Department’s Purchasing Team has been incurred under a pan-Government contract with OGC.bs.

The cost of managing this contract, which has been running for 12 months, is £141,510.

The release of information relating to the amounts being paid to individual companies would prejudice commercial interests in this instance and could affect the Department’s future negotiating position.

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many of the suppliers to the Online Procurement for Educational Needs system had received orders by the end of January 2008. (186973)

For the period 15 March 2007 to 31 January 2008; 77 different suppliers received orders placed by schools. As of 18 February 2008 729 suppliers are registered to use OPEN.

In order for a greater number of transactions to take place, a greater number of schools’ suppliers also need to be available on OPEN for them to transact with. As this was a pathfinder, limited resources were available to engage with the educational supplier marketplace and effort was concentrated on those suppliers nominated by schools that they usually traded with in the first instance.