Digital Marketplace 8th birthday
Eight years ago yesterday on 6th November 2014, the UK Government Digital Marketplace opened for business. This was made possible by collective leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and foundations laid several years earlier as the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) was set up.
Image showing two maps of the UK Government digital data and technology supply chain, comparing 2010 to 2014 when the Digital Marketplace launched. Image source: ‘What we can learn from Korea’ blog post by former UK Government Chief Technology Officer Liam Maxwell.
We thought we should mark the Digital Marketplace’s 8th birthday because:
the last time this anniversary was officially celebrated publicly was 2 years ago; and
the Digital Marketplace is due to be replaced by a new digital service called the ‘Public Procurement Gateway'.
This 8th birthday would also conclude this chapter of UK public sector digital data and technology (DDaT) commercial reforms.
What’s the Digital Marketplace?
It’s a platform that enables UK public sector buyers to commission Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) services and capabilities from a range of providers. It’s home to 2 Crown Commercial Service (CCS) agreements - G-Cloud and Digital Outcomes and Specialists - and provides information on the CCS Crown Hosting agreement.
So what
While factual, this definition is somewhat functional, transactional and narrow, and doesn’t reflect the broader role that the Digital Marketplace has played:
in helping to open up the public procurement market to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs);
to increase transparency of public sector DDaT spend;
in supporting community-led approaches to build capability; and
to inspire and help other countries.
Opening up the public procurement market
The Digital Marketplace is unquestionably the poster child for supporting the Government’s 33% SME spending commitment (we’ll come back to this in the next section).
However, to fully appreciate how the Digital Marketplace has helped to open up the public sector procurement market, we should look more broadly at what ought to be a ‘golden thread’ of consistent principles, standards and governance flowing throughout the DDaT commercial lifecycle.
The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) Technology Code of Practice and spend controls provide the standards and assurance at the pre-procurement planning stage. The CDDO Service Standard and service assessments provide the same at the post-procurement delivery stage.
Without all of these elements being in place and working together, we truly believe that the Digital Marketplace wouldn’t be the successes it is today.
Following these standards and assurance approaches are mandated for central government, and used voluntarily by other public sector organisations who subscribe to the Local Digital Declaration.
Many teams have benefited from Local Digital Fund support and have commissioned DDaT services and capabilities from the market. For example, the City of Lincoln Council and the London Borough of Southwark used the Digital Marketplace to develop a new digital service for housing repairs. The technical alpha was awarded to SME Unboxed and the beta was awarded to SME Made Tech.
These approaches in commercial practice have now been tried and tested for over a decade. The Government Transformation Strategy 2017 to 2020 set a priority target to build better tools, processes and governance for civil servants by leading a step-change in procurement. This would build on the Digital Marketplace’s approach to ensure that user-centred, design-led, data-driven and open approaches are commonplace in contracting - and spreading these approaches to create a marketplace for government buyers.
We have high hopes that this target will be achieved by the CCS Public Procurement Gateway, now that it’s met its CDDO Service Standard beta assessment.
Increasing DDaT spend transparency
It’s great that CCS openly publishes Digital Marketplace spend data. Based on yesterday’s dashboard update, and ignoring the £520.15 million yet to be classified as either with SMEs or large suppliers, £16.48 billion has been spent through the Digital Marketplace since April 2012:
£6.43 billion (39%) has been spent with 2,645 SMEs (despite the British Chambers of Commerce and public procurement analysts Tussell stating recently that the Government is 'significantly behind' its SME spending target); and
£10.05 billion (61%) has been spent with 712 large suppliers.
Apart from the CCS Technology Products agreement only Digital Marketplace agreements appear in the '5.3 SME Numbers Growth Over Time' table of the CCS 'SME Action Plan' from November 2021.
Last financial year (2021/22) UK public sector organisations spent £1.41 billion with SMEs through the Digital Marketplace. That’s 64% of CCS’s total direct spend of £2.22 billion with SMEs in the last financial year (as stated in their annual report and accounts for 2021 to 2022).
Supporting community-led approaches to build capability
In 2018 the inimitable Emilia Hogarth (who was then at CCS) set up the buying digital community. This was a fundamentally important step to help DDaT buyers across the public sector, particularly Digital Marketplace users, because its primary purpose was to:
create and support a peer group across government
share knowledge and best practice for buying DDaT services
discuss common challenges and develop solutions
make sure that procurement practices support agile ways of working
Emilia also invited providers of DDaT services to give their perspectives on supplying to the public sector, to help buyers appreciate the challenges and barriers they face and to build mutual respect and empathy.
During the Covid-19 pandemic the community thrived on a purely virtual basis, and is now back to face-to-face meetings.
Emilia is now working with the Cabinet Office’s Transforming Public Procurement Programme, and it’s her passionate and unwavering community-based leadership while at CCS that’s one of the main reasons why a consistent approach is being taken, to support implementing the new legislative regime at scale.
“The formal learning and development will be supported by communities of practice where practitioners can support each other - sharing, discussing and reflecting on best practice, challenges, and opportunities within the new regime.”
Well done Emilia; we’re right behind you to support all your efforts on this.
Inspiring and helping other countries
Actively reusing digital public goods and contributing to open digital ecosystems, working across organisational boundaries and spanning geographical contexts, is really important to move beyond traditional ‘buy versus build’ decision making in DDaT commercial.
Reuse, buy and build can coexist as complementary rather than competing decision making approaches. The UK Digital Marketplace is one of many examples of digital public goods that have inspired and helped other countries, which is something directly covered in this blog post by multinational law firm Pinsent Masons.
Some past and more recent examples include:
Australia
In 2016 GDS worked with the Australian Digital Transformation Office (DTO - now the Digital Transformation Agency) of the Federal Government to help them launch their Digital Marketplace beta in just 5 weeks - months ahead of schedule - by sharing and reusing the UK Digital Marketplace code. The GDS and DTO teams also agreed to collaborate around a shared backlog so that both countries could benefit from future development efforts.
In June 2018 the New South Wales (NSW) State Government launched buy.nsw - Australia’s first government marketplace for cloud - that would develop into the State’s gateway to NSW Government procurement resources and services. As stated in the buy.nsw attribution, the NSW Government acknowledges:
the UK GDS for the materials that have been adapted from the UK Digital Marketplace
the Digital Transformation Agency for the materials that have been adapted from their Digital Marketplace
This was made possible by open source code, working in the open and an openness to collaborate between governments. Making things open makes them better.
Canada
Last month Dr. Amanda Clarke (Associate Professor) and Sean Boots (Public Servant-in-Residence) at the Carleton University School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA) in Canada, published ‘A Guide to Reforming Information Technology Procurement in the Government of Canada’.
This Carleton University SPPA research project is excellent and draws on various better practices published in the open by reformers from around the world. This includes the UK Digital Marketplace and the work that our Associate Director Warren Smith led on contract simplification, which was collaboratively delivered between GDS, the CCS Commercial Policy team and the Government Legal Department (GLD), and inspired the early stage developments of the Public Sector Contract.
Thailand
CURSHAW recently started working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Thailand with sponsorship by the British Embassy Bangkok. This project is to support the Thai Comptroller General's Department as they take steps forward to digitalise the public procurement system for Thailand, and we will use the UK Digital Marketplace and other examples from around the world to inform this work.
What’s next?
We’re recording a series of podcasts with people who have been part of the Digital Marketplace journey, which we’ll publish on our blog over the coming weeks.
Please get in touch to contribute your perspectives and experience if:
you work in areas such as commercial, procurement, public finance management, public governance, transparency, supply chain management, legal, contract management or DDaT; and / or