When the Victorian government introduced its Social Procurement Framework (SPF), it was hailed as a landmark policy. The idea was simple and powerful: use the state’s enormous purchasing power — tens of billions of dollars annually — to generate social and environmental outcomes alongside value for money.

Three years of real operation later, it’s time for an honest assessment. Is it working?

The promise

The SPF requires all Victorian government departments and agencies to consider social and sustainable outcomes when making purchasing decisions. It covers seven priority areas, including opportunities for disadvantaged Victorians, opportunities for Victorian Aboriginal people, environmentally sustainable outputs, and supporting safe and fair workplaces.

For social enterprises, the framework was particularly exciting. It created a formal pathway for mission-driven organisations to compete for government contracts — something that had previously been almost impossible given the way procurement was structured.

The numbers

The Victorian government has reported significant figures. Billions in contracts with social procurement commitments. Thousands of employment outcomes for disadvantaged groups. Increased spending with social enterprises and Aboriginal businesses.

These headline numbers look impressive. The question is what’s happening beneath them.

I’ve been talking to social enterprises, procurement officers, and policy analysts about their experience with the SPF, and the picture is more complicated than the official reports suggest.

What’s working

First, the good news. The framework has genuinely changed the conversation within government procurement teams. Social value is now a standard part of tender evaluation, not an afterthought. Procurement officers I’ve spoken to say they’re actively looking for opportunities to include social procurement commitments.

The Aboriginal business sector has seen measurable growth, with more government contracts flowing to Aboriginal-owned enterprises. Some social enterprises have landed their first government contracts through the framework, providing revenue stability they’d never had before.

And the framework has pushed large contractors to think about their supply chains. Tier 1 contractors on major projects are now subcontracting to social enterprises and Aboriginal businesses in order to meet their social procurement commitments.

What isn’t

The challenges are significant. Many social enterprises report that government procurement processes remain complex, slow, and expensive to participate in. The SPF created a policy framework, but it didn’t fix the underlying procurement machinery. Small organisations still struggle with the paperwork, insurance requirements, and compliance burden of government contracts.

There’s also a measurement problem. Many social procurement commitments are about intentions rather than outcomes. A contractor might commit to employing a certain number of disadvantaged workers, but tracking whether those employment outcomes are genuine, sustained, and meaningful is another matter entirely.

Several procurement officers told me — off the record — that the reporting requirements are burdensome but not particularly useful. They’re counting things that are easy to count rather than measuring things that actually matter.

The social enterprise bottleneck

Here’s a structural issue that doesn’t get enough attention: there aren’t enough procurement-ready social enterprises to absorb the demand the SPF is generating.

Government contracts require certain capabilities — insurance, quality systems, financial stability, workforce capacity. Many social enterprises don’t have these, and building them takes time and investment. The result is that a relatively small number of larger, more established social enterprises are getting most of the contracts, while smaller organisations are locked out.

Some intermediary organisations are working to address this, providing procurement readiness support and aggregating smaller social enterprises into consortia that can bid for larger contracts. But progress is slow.

The compliance trap

I worry that the SPF is becoming a compliance exercise rather than a genuine strategy for social change. When procurement officers treat social procurement as a box to tick rather than a goal to pursue, you get weak commitments that don’t generate meaningful outcomes.

I’ve seen tender responses that include social procurement commitments so vague they’re essentially meaningless. “We will endeavour to provide opportunities for disadvantaged groups.” That’s not a commitment. That’s a sentence.

What would make it better

The framework itself is sound. The implementation needs work. Specifically:

Simplify procurement processes for smaller contracts. Not every engagement needs the same level of compliance and documentation. Create streamlined pathways for social enterprises.

Invest in building the pipeline of procurement-ready social enterprises. This means capacity-building programs, mentoring, and potentially some form of guarantee scheme for new entrants.

Shift reporting from outputs to outcomes. Stop counting the number of contracts and start measuring the quality of the employment, environmental, and social outcomes being generated.

And build in proper evaluation. The framework should be independently evaluated at regular intervals, with findings made public.

The verdict

Victoria’s Social Procurement Framework is a genuine innovation in Australian public policy. It’s creating real opportunities and shifting how government thinks about procurement. But it’s not yet delivering on its full potential, and without sustained attention to implementation, there’s a risk it becomes bureaucratic window dressing.

The bones are good. The execution needs more work.