Government Report Proposes Creating a 'Social Service Operator Team'
An inter-ministerial team recommends establishing a 'social service operator team' to streamline tender procedures. This is part of an effort to address severe bureaucratic failures in a 17-billion-shekel procurement sector.
The inter-ministerial team for examining social procurement recommends establishing a "team of social service operators" to shorten tender procedures and setting up a government unit to support government procurement. This is part of a series of recommendations intended to deal with the severe failures in procurement worth 17 billion shekels, including: severe cumbersomeness and bureaucracy in tenders, lack of flexibility in service delivery, lack of coordination and duplication between government ministries, difficulties in accumulating and transferring knowledge, and more.
The Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Finance, and the social ministries are partners in the report, which was prepared in cooperation with service operators and civil society. Its recommendations are relatively easy to implement, do not involve political struggles or the allocation of large resources, and therefore the chances of implementation are high. At the same time, it is not certain that they are indeed capable of dealing with the severe problems stemming from the privatization of social services.
Key Recommendations
The report recommends anchoring the unique principles of social procurement in regulation, such as prioritizing quality and reliability over price considerations in tender regulation; developing a team of social service operators that will sort an organized pool of operators by specialization, strengthen competition and transparency, and shorten tender procedures; and establishing a government center for promoting social procurement in the Prime Minister's Office, which will assist ministries with data, research, knowledge, and tools, with the goal of freeing them for supervision and management of the activity and to streamline and simplify bureaucratic procedures.
The report determines that social procurement suffers from a "long series of phenomena, difficulties, and barriers that repeat in various manifestations throughout the supply stages." The scope of social procurement in the three main ministries — Education, Health, and Welfare — stands at over 17 billion shekels for about 230 different services.
Systemic Issues
The report exposes the difficult situation and the problematic nature of the existing social procurement system. It criticizes the fact that "in the social procurement system, high variability is evident between tenders and engagements — in wording, in the definition of requirements, and in the operating structure." This lack of coordination creates uncertainty among operators and imposes a burden on both the market and the ministries.
According to the report, social services require dynamic and variable operation. 61% of the operators noted that, in their perception, the bureaucratic and regulatory requirements reduce their ability to exercise the required flexibility. Furthermore, the average duration of time from the initiation of a tender procedure until the selection of operators stands at about a year and a half, and sometimes even exceeds two years.
One of the severe problems created in social procurement is the creation of a severe dependence on operators. "This dependence may weaken supervision and enforcement mechanisms and makes it difficult to carry out necessary vital changes." When the replacement of operators is not regulated, the therapeutic continuity vital for patients is harmed and severe damage may be caused to them.
