Crown Commercial Service and Electronics Watch Announce Collaboration
Electronics Watch and Crown Commercial Service (CCS) will be working in partnership to detect and address modern slavery in supply chains of public sector customers seeking assured technology hardware purchasing options.
The Crown Commercial Service is the largest public sector procurement organisation in the UK, helping organisations across the whole of the UK public sector find the right commercial solutions for around £12 billion of spend each year.
The project within the CCS Technology Products and Service area will initially review the hardware supply chains within the Technology Products 2 framework. It will analyse, detect and mitigate the risk of modern slavery in the hardware supply chain through resellers and hardware Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) suppliers.
Lessons learned during this initial stage will be built into future procurements, such as Technology Products 3, and the work will be rolled out to other technology framework agreements with a risk of modern slavery.
The partnership between CCS and Electronics Watch should assist both parties to improve conditions for workers at risk of modern slavery. The goal is for good public procurement for the common good.