ePC cards - Service Manual

An electronic purchasing card (ePC) offers a quick and efficient means of payment for appropriate goods and services. It's largely used, as long as the supplier accepts Mastercard as a payment method, for either:

low-value, one-off purchases
purchases that are defined as annual expenditure, i.e. not on a contract

ePC cardholders must ensure that any goods or services that are being purchased provide best value for money for public funds. When buying using an ePC, you must obtain:

one quote from a supplier, either by telephone or in writing, before you buy, for purchases up to the value of £1,000
three written quotes from different suppliers for any purchase over £1,000

For spending limits and other rules about using an ePC in the Scottish Government, you can check on Saltire.

If you work for the Scottish Government, you should start your procurement process by contacting your directorate's DPO.

If you do not have a DPO, or you work for an agency of the Scottish Government or another organisation under the Technology Assurance Framework, check who you need to contact.

Starting your procurement with your DPO or a procurement specialist

When contacting your DPO or procurement specialist, you should be able to explain your procurement requirements. For very basic, low value procurements, you will not need to give extensive details, but for everything else you should be able to explain:

the needs of your users - you should have a good sense of your users' requirements from the discovery phase of your project and from carrying out user research
what advice you've had from subject matter and technical experts that have helped you form your requirements - if you work for the Scottish Government, you should fill in a questionnaire that will help put you in contact with some of the people who can provide the specialist technical advice you'll need

At this point of the process, you should only be thinking of your procurement in terms of requirements - what needs must be met - rather than in terms of buying a specific product or service.

If you work within the Scottish Government, an Accountable Officer Form will also need to be completed before any procurement can take place.

Your DPO or procurement specialist will help you decide the best way to procure what you need.

The best route to procuring what you need depends on a number of factors including cost and how common your requirements are. Things your DPO or procurement specialist will look at are whether:

for a common, low value procurement within the Scottish Government, an ePC can be used to quickly buy something to meet your requirements
a Scottish Government reusable component, such as ScotPayments, ScotAccount or the Cloud platform can be used - if possible, reusing existing Scottish Government components will save your service time and money

If reuse is not suitable, it's likely your DPO or procurement specialist will need to go to the external market with your requirements to buy what you need. It's important to note that you do not need to do anything to start the process of going to market - it's the responsbility of your DPO or procurement specialist to oversee this process - though they may need to involve you in some aspects of market engagement, such as speaking to suppliers to explain your requirements.

Your DPO or procurement specialist will also let you know if supporting documents, like a specification document, need to be produced as part of this process.

Find out more about the options when going to market, including procurement frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems.

You'll need to evaluate offers from suppliers with your DPO or procurement specialist.

During this process, your DPO or procurement specialist will undertake a commercial evaluation of offers and you will need to undertake a technical evaluation to check which offer best meets your requirements.

You should set up a Tender Evaluation Panel within your team to conduct your technical evaluation. This panel should involve senior leads on your project, such as Service or Product Owners, and include appropriate digital expertise.

You'll need to make sure that what the panel decides to buy as a result of your technical evaluation is evidenced as:

meeting the Digital Scotland Service Standard (DSSS), especially DSSS criteria about choosing the right technology, understanding your users and accessibility
having a documented decision process - you might capture your evaluation in a Technology Options Appraisal document, especially if your procurement is complex or there are a high number of offers, but how you evidence your evaluation is up to you as long as your documentation is robust

The commercial evaluation, carried out by your DPO or procurement specialist, will often include 'weightings'. These will be applied to help prioritise your requirements, and evaluate which offer meets them in the most cost-effective way.

Once you've made the decision about what you're going to procure, your DPO or procurement specialist will sign a contract with the successful supplier.

Your contract will be a fully integrated, consistent suite of documents. It will define:

what you're buying, i.e. a specification
the method and timeframe for delivery, risk allocation and other key commercial terms, e.g. the payment mechanism and KPIs
what happens if things go wrong, i.e. that critical risk allocation is defined and properly reflected in the contract

The contract also makes sure:

decisions on contractual roles and responsibilities are documented
the rights and obligations of each party, and the associated contractual processes required to implement your procurement, are defined clearly

If the procurement was done through a framework, your supplier will generally have already signed up to pre-agreed, robust terms and conditions as part of their successful entry to a framework. If the procurement was done through a dynamic purchasing system, or in another way, this will not be the case, so your DPO or procurement specialist will help you put the terms together from a set of standard terms and conditions used for Scottish Government procurement contracts.

Proportionality

The complexity of your contract will match the scale, complexity, criticality and lifecycle of the goods or services your contract is for. If it's an ongoing product or service, you’ll need to make sure that your team is resourced to actively manage the relationship with your supplier and the product or service delivered through the contract.

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