In response to questions from fellow MPs, ministers cite various benefits already being delivered by the specialist tech buying unit created last year to guide departments and engage with suppliers

Government’s new hub for ensuring best practice in the procurement of technology and digital services has already delivered double-digit savings on core staff devices, according to ministers.

The Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence (DCCOE) was created last year with a remit to create a cross-department “sourcing strategy” for tech, as well as providing a convening point through which top IT suppliers can engage with government.

The centre, which is now staffed by about 24 officials, is also “responsible for delivering on the digital procurement recommendations made by the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee”, according to AI and online safety minister Kanishka Narayan.

The minister, who was answering a written parliamentary question about the DCCOE’s work so far from Liberal Democrat MP Victoria Collins, said that the specialist unit has already “made positive progress in addressing those recommendations”.

Chief among these is a recent “successful agreement of an end-user device aggregation purchase that allows participating organisations to realise cost efficiencies of approximately 11% versus current procurement arrangements”.

Narayan added: “On cloud specifically, the DCCOE is leading on efforts to transform the way we procure cloud services, in line with commitments made in the Blueprint for modern digital government to ‘negotiate whole-of-public-sector agreements and contracting once for a limited number of high value cases, including platform services such as cloud’.”

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The DCCOE is based in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – with the Cabinet Office, home of the Government Commercial Function and Crown Commercial Service, also providing oversight of the centre’s work.

Addressing PAC last year, the then government chief technology officer David Knott told MPs that the strategy being developed by the centre of excellence would help 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”.

“We recognise that the technology market has shifted,” he added. “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 creation of the dedicated tech procurement hub reflects the fact that “sourcing in digital at the moment is probably more complicated than it used to be”, Knott said.

“It used to be an old buy-versus-build choice, and now it is much more buy, build, partner, procure, innovate and so on,” he told MPs.