Senior officials have revealed that a new unit dedicated to best practice in tech procurement will house two dozen people whose first job will be to develop an updated strategy
A new government-wide strategy for sourcing digital platforms will provide “really clear steers to departments on when it makes sense to build things ourselves and when it makes sense to buy from the market”, according to Whitehall’s technology chief.
The intent to develop a ‘digital sourcing strategy’ was first trailed in the State of digital government review published earlier this year, alongside the launch of the new and expanded Government Digital Service.
Giving evidence last week to parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, government chief technology officer David Knott said that strategy “will have multiple parts but two big things” it hopes to achieve.
The first of these is to give agencies across government very clear guidance on when it is likely to be preferable to build digital systems in house, and when it would bring greater benefits to buy from external providers.
The second core ambition will be to provide is “strategies for approaching different parts of the market”, according to Knott.
“We recognise that the technology market has shifted,” he told MPs. “The big platform providers—people who provide cloud and office suites and so on—have different business models and incentives to the big systems integrators and consultants that run projects. They are also different from the people who ship us hardware and make a margin on hardware. Our approach to getting performance for each of those has to be tailored to their business models.”
The issuance of the new guidance reflects the fact “sourcing in digital at the moment is probably more complicated than it used to be”, the CTO added.
“It used to be an old buy-versus-build choice, and now it is much more buy, build, partner, procure, innovate and so on,” Knott said.
Developing the sourcing strategy will represent a priority programme of work for a newly created Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence. The centre which will be based in the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology but, according to Cabinet Office permanent secretary Cat Little, will also have “reporting lines” into the central department, which is home to the Government Commercial Function and Crown Commercial Service.
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Over the next few weeks, the two departments will be working to “fully staff up resource and ensure that [the unit] has the capacity across our digital and commercial teams to operate”. The Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence will be comprised of a team of 24 people, Little said.
The Cabinet Office head, who also holds the post of chief operating office for the civil service, also told MPs a dedicated team will work specifically with the largest tech firms supplying government.
“The immediate next step is to develop our sourcing strategy, work with the big technology suppliers through the BTU, our ‘big tech unit’, and work out how we go about procuring in different ways to deliver the tangible things that the government have asked us to deliver,” she said. “I make that sound very simple, but it is actually incredibly complicated. Then there is a much broader package about how we continue the brilliant progress we have made on upskilling the functions but also the wider civil service, so that we are a really intelligent customer. That is an ongoing challenge, alongside how we police and ensure compliance across everything that we do. That is not a simple set of actions that change overnight, I am afraid; that is a comprehensive package of upskilling, capability and assurance.”
Little said that these measures aim to address a current landscape where there is plenty of good practice, but in which “the issue is consistency”. This mixed picture was highlighted in a recent National Audit Office report on government’s relationship with tech providers.
“The report… draws out an important point about the point in the cycle between policy inception and delivery where these multidisciplinary teams come together”, Little added. “That is a constant challenge in government: making sure that you have the professionals at the table when you are solving problems and developing policy ideas. In my experience, that is quite mixed. Some departments are better than others at getting their commercial, digital, finance, HR and legal teams together at inception. That is something that we have to fix. We need to have commercial, digital and other experts helping to solve things from the start, including our supply chain.”
