Strategic suppliers: Understanding and managing the risks of service disruption

An article by Sue Trezise, Sue-lutions Ltd.

The Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) recently released (June 2021) its report Strategic suppliers: Understanding and managing the risks of service disruption.

This article provides a brief outline of the report from the viewpoint of an interested risk practitioner.

Strategic suppliers provide goods and services that are of critical importance and often not easily sourced elsewhere. Given the importance of strategic suppliers to the delivery of public services, the OAG carried out a performance audit to understand how well public organisations, including central agencies and local government, understand and manage strategic supplier risk.

The audit looked at practices across the public sector to assess:

  • The extent to which suppliers are key strategic suppliers is known
  • What processes are in place for identifying, assessing and mitigating the risk of important public services being disrupted by strategic supplier failure
  • What reporting is provided to senior leaders on strategic supply risks

To read the full article, please click here.