Digital, Data and Technology Sourcing Playbook? Part #1
The Cabinet Office recently published its ‘Digital, Data and Technology [DDaT] Sourcing Playbook’, which was launched at an event hosted by techUK on 5 April. This may be welcomed by some contracting authorities who are looking for clarity on the government’s intersecting policies and priorities, and how these underpin the government’s DDaT and commercial activities.
Across 12 chapters covering 11 key policies, there are 6 cross-cutting priorities that describe at a relatively high level how the government will:
Take an outcome-based approach to the delivery of products and services focusing on user needs, not specific solutions
Avoid and remediate legacy IT and tackle its technical debt
Ensure cyber security to maintain operational resilience
Drive sustainability in its environment, commercial practices and economy
Enable innovation from continuous improvement to transformative new products and services
Level the playing field for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to enable economic growth, employment and investment opportunities
While clarity on the government’s intersecting policies and priorities is welcome, generally it appears not to cover a level of practical depth nor illustrative case studies that would support contracting authorities to move away from traditional, siloed and transactional approaches to procurement.
Specifically, it also appears not to cover:
How to mainstream gender, equality and social inclusion (GESI) in DDaT procurement
How to operationalise transparency throughout the public spending lifecycle
The international opportunities for DDaT SMEs enabled through procurement; and
The importance of culture.
In this Part #1 we provide our initial CURSHAW perspectives on what we see to be these general and specific omissions, and therefore our suggestions for how this Playbook should be iteratively improved:
Take an outcome-based approach
Drive sustainability
Level the playing field for SMEs
We plan to cover the remaining elements in Part #2.
Take an outcome-based approach
It’s essential that governments focus on the problems to solve that best meet the needs of citizens, businesses and other public service users in their local communities, rather than jumping to particular (and often assumed) solutions.
This Playbook states that:
“To understand [users’] needs, public bodies may need to invest in internal user research capacity before they are well-positioned to go to market for technology solutions.
As taking an outcome-based approach is stated as a key policy, CURSHAW’s view on this is that investing in user research capacity (as well as user-centred service design and agile delivery capabilities more broadly) is not an option that is subject to consideration and discretion; it’s of fundamental importance.
Our view on this is shared by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which defines being user-driven as one of the 6 Dimensions of its Digital Government Policy Framework. This means awarding a central role to people’ needs and convenience in the shaping of processes, services and policies, and by adopting inclusive mechanisms for this to happen.
The OECD goes further on this in its recent Framework for Digital Talent and Skills in the Public Sector, which argues that it’s important for all public servants to have a grounding in digital government user skills in order to contribute effectively to digital transformation efforts.
“To understand [users’] needs, public bodies may need to invest in internal user research capacity before they are well-positioned to go to market for technology solutions.”
The five digital government user skills identified by the OECD as providing a baseline for all public servants, regardless of their professional role, are:
Recognising the potential of digital transformation
Understanding users and their needs
Collaborating for iterative delivery
Trustworthy use of data and technology; and
Data-driven government.
This is much more about establishing a culture of meeting user needs to support the design and delivery of public services in the digital age. We’ll come back to the importance of culture in Part #2.
Drive sustainability
The climate emergency is a global challenge that requires nations to take local action, so it’s encouraging to see driving sustainability as one of the Playbook’s 6 cross-cutting priorities. The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires all sectors of society to mobilise for this so-called ‘Decade of Action’ on three levels:
Global action: to secure greater leadership, more resources and smarter solutions for the SDGs
Local action: to embed the needed transitions in the policies, budgets, institutions and regulatory frameworks of governments, cities and local authorities; and
People action: to mobilise youth, civil society, the media, the private sector, unions, academia and other stakeholders to generate an unstoppable movement for the required transformations.
However, according to the World Economic Forum, cities house more than half of the global population and account for 70% of the CO2 emissions that lie at the heart of the climate crisis. By 2050, 68% of humanity will live in cities, resulting in higher energy consumption, greater infrastructure needs, and increased carbon emissions.
With this in mind, CURSHAW’s view is that there are several shortcomings in the Playbook that could be easily addressed now, or as part of its next iteration; specifically, what must contracting authorities start to do differently on a day-to-day basis, which would set them on a better path towards achieving the SDGs?
There’s only passing references to the government’s 2050 net zero targets, but no reference at all to the Greening government: ICT and digital services strategy 2020 to 2025 - this is already an embedded aspect of point 12 (‘Make your technology sustainable’) of the Technology Code of Practice, and therefore Cabinet Office Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) spend controls;
There’s also only passing references to the role of local government and the wider public sector - there’s no mention of the Local Digital Declaration (a collaboration between the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), the Government Digital Service (GDS), and a collection of co-publishers representing local authorities and sector bodies from across the UK); and
While there’s welcome reference to the Procurement Policy Notice (PPN) 06/21 ‘Taking account of Carbon Reduction Plans in the procurement of major government contracts’, this only applies where the anticipated annual contract value is above £5 million - what actions should contracting authorities take in particular when working with DDaT SMEs, in circumstances that are outside of the scope but in the spirit of this PPN?
National and local governments, citizens, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders (such as research institutions, civil society organisations, and others) all play an absolutely critical role in driving sustainability through innovation, and it’s vital that all these actors interact - the so-called ‘quadruple helix’ model. The government could be doing more to coordinate these efforts to address existential challenges such as the climate crisis.
Our view on this is shared by the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, which states in its ‘Mission-Oriented Innovation in Action 2021 Casebook’ that these are challenges that “markets alone will not be able to solve… finding solutions to grand challenges will require deep, purposeful collaboration between all societal actors.”
Level the playing field for SMEs
The Playbook rightfully acknowledges the UK tech sector as world leading, and growing at 2.5 times the rate of the rest of the economy;
“[This sector] contributes £149 billion to the UK and supports almost three million jobs, making the sector a pivotal part of our future growth.”
Using cloud to enable SME involvement through public procurement is also acknowledged. The Playbook references the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), which offers a number of framework options through which DDaT products and services can be procured.
However, conspicuous by their absence from the Playbook is any mention of the Digital Marketplace and its associated CCS framework agreements - G-Cloud, and Digital Outcomes and Specialists
The CCS website currently lists 111 'live' framework agreements across all their categories (there are currently 28 live agreements in their ‘Technology’ category). Using CCS's spend data dashboard for the Digital Marketplace (which is home to two of the 111 CCS framework agreements), this accounted for 77% (£1.2 billion) of CCS's total direct spend with SMEs in 2020-21 (£1.54 billion, as stated in their annual report and accounts 2020 to 2021).
Data published more recently for 2021-22 shows Digital Marketplace spend to have exceeded £3.686 billion, and of that £1.38 billion was with SMEs. In last year’s annual report and accounts CCS reported its Technology category spend to be £8.13 billion, and CURSHAW’s analysts estimate that 2021-22 spend in this category could easily be around £9 billion. Therefore, the Digital Marketplace and its 2 CCS frameworks could account for around 40% of the CCS Technology category’s total spend for 2021-22, whereas 26 frameworks account for the remaining 60%.
CURSHAW’s view on this is that it would be hubris to claim that the Digital Marketplace addresses all the needs of the primary users of public procurement - buyers and suppliers. However, clearly there’s something different about the approach that was taken to design and deliver the Digital Marketplace and its associated CCS framework agreements.
The Government Transformation Strategy 2017 to 2020 stated that a priority for tools, processes and governance, was to lead a step-change in procurement to ensure that user-centred, design-led, data-driven and open approaches are commonplace in contracting by 2020 - and spreading these approaches to create a marketplace for government buyers.
In last year’s annual report and accounts CCS state that their Change Programme is the refreshed Transformation Programme, which consisted of three elements:
the Accelerate element - tactical digital solutions for specific commercial agreements
the Scale element - a strategic digital solution for CCS; and
the Transform element - focused on the people and cultural elements of change.
What’s not clear to us is how much investment has been made in an empowered and trusted multidisciplinary team, to design and deliver the successor to the Digital Marketplace service since CCS took over running it.
And so?
In summary, CURSHAW welcomes clarity on the government’s intersecting policies and priorities, and how these underpin the government’s DDaT and commercial activities.
We’re keen to hear your views on this Playbook. If you’re the intended audience, has it helped form your views on how to cut costs and support job growth, and the practical steps you need to take? If you’re a provider of DDaT products, services and capabilities, has it enhanced your understanding of what to expect from contracting authorities and the role you will be asked to play? Does it give you greater confidence that digital services run by the government will be overhauled as a result of the Playbook, to ensure better social value for taxpayers and support job growth across the UK?
Finally, we would be interested to hear what you would ideally like to hear from CURSHAW. What key questions does this Playbook leave you with?
If you want to hear more about our CURSHAW view on the Digital, Data and Technology Sourcing Playbook, please contact our Associate Director Warren Smith - warren.smith@curshaw.com