We need to talk, openly and honestly: part 3

In my previous part 2 blog post I talked about the topics that the Procuring and Supplying Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) Unconference 2022 participants discussed, and provided some of the details behind two table discussions that I led.

With the breadth of topics that gave us all different starting points for our individual discussions throughout the day, what I find particularly fascinating is that there’s generally a consistent set of underlying issues, challenges and root causes to them all.

In this final blog post in the mini-series, I share my reflections on these problems and offer some initial thoughts on ways that these could be addressed. 

Image showing a group discussion taking place during the unconference.

To buy or build is a false binary

The procurement world is very familiar with traditional ‘buy versus build’ decision making. However, the world of DDaT requires a much more nuanced understanding of the ever evolving landscape in order to meet users’ needs.

It’s not simply a matter of knowing what digital public goods and infrastructure exists, and what’s available in the market as ‘commercial, off the shelf’ cloud software (although this is very important). 

Additionally, I think what’s required is:

• collective leadership (chief officers representing digital, finance, commercial, legal, people, etc) to create enabling environments through aligned funding, standards, governance, skills, etc, where reuse, buy and build can coexist as complementary rather than competing decision making approaches, and at a more granular component level;

• capability in DDaT and commercial teams to know what should be reused, what should be bought, and what should be built, working effectively and collaboratively with a diverse range of partners by focussing on joint delivery of their technology projects and programmes; and

• multi-stakeholder silo-busting global networks and communities of practice, which work across organisational boundaries to address complex challenges, span geographical contexts, mutually commit to the active reuse of digital public goods, and active contribution to open digital ecosystems. 

The recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) ‘New Economy Forum: Transforming Fiscal Policy Through Digital Public Infrastructure’ event covered this clearly and succinctly.

Early market engagement is critical yet under used

Or worse, used insincerely. Talking to the market is largely meaningless if it’s simply about broadcast, not listening or an unwillingness to adapt based on feedback; this is engagement theatre, which lacks empathy for market operators, wastes everyone's time and money, and does nothing to transform the relationship between the market and the state.

Early engagement has to be open, honest and genuine; storytelling and listening are essential commercial skills to evidence how plans and approaches have iteratively evolved throughout a series of two-way conversations with both buyer and supplier users.

NHS England’s statutory guidance on working in partnership with people and communities provides great approaches and examples that commercial practitioners can follow for genuine, incremental and participatory early market engagement.

Early market engagement needs to focus on talking about the important things

Procurement-led approaches typically don’t start from, or result in, a deep understanding of what people need from DDaT products, services and capabilities. Echoing point 1 of the UK Government Design Principles, if you don’t understand your users’ needs, there’s a good chance you won’t build or deliver the right commercial agreement to solve the issue at hand. 

Instead of placing emphasis on detailed and highly functional specifications and prescriptive requirements, disproportionate evaluation criteria, and complex contracts, focus on clearly describing who the users are, what users’ needs are, which users’ needs aren’t being met currently, what problems need to be solved and have been prioritised to meet users’ needs, the outcomes and social impact to achieve, and the wider system benefits of doing this.

Opacity and poor early engagement undermines transparency and trust

A report from the Open Contracting Partnership and Spend Network estimated that globally governments spend US$13 trillion a year on public contracts, but less than 3% of this is published openly.

For prospective suppliers to the public sector, the pre-procurement stage of the commercial lifecycle is vital to increase visibility of planned future contracting opportunities. This stage is also vital for the general public, civil society and the media, who should be able to monitor how taxpayers’ money is intended to be spent, where, when, on what, for what purpose and for what public benefit, in order to better hold public sector organisations to account.

By publishing contract data as DDaT and commercial pipelines at the pre-procurement planning stage, the market will have a better quantitative understanding of the opportunities that they’re suited to apply for, as well as the future demand profile of the public sector when these data sets are aggregated. This future profile can help individual operators and the market in which they’re active to adapt their supply offerings, which could include diversifying products and services, recruiting talent in different locations, exporting to new markets, etc.

Combining open data with honest and genuine early engagement, provides the market with the all-important qualitative understanding of the opportunities, which increases transparency and builds public trust.

User-centred design and agile methods in commercial practice are the exception

If procurement practitioners aren't mainstreaming these methods, this increases the risk that routes to market and contracts will be created in an idealised vacuum, expecting buyer and supplier users to adapt how they work with framework agreements and ‘call-off’ contracts that were made without their needs genuinely being at the centre when they were developed.

Entrenched culture, custom and practice in procurement creates barriers to reform

Shattering the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality in public procurement is vital to improve how governments work. Collectively, leaders should trust, empower and equip anybody within their organisation to constructively challenge the status quo, to support delivery of better public services.

Slavishly following institutionally ingrained custom and practice in public procurement, in the false belief that “it’s the law”, is a blight on progress throughout the global north and south. Key barriers are rooted in procurement culture, custom and practice, which can and should be tackled at all levels of government.

Potential DDaT supplier have to navigate and decipher all this complexity

This is an issue that disproportionately affects DDaT small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as they’re unlikely to be in a position (unlike large companies) to have dedicated bid teams, legal teams, etc, in order to discover and respond to public sector contracting opportunities.

As a result, SMEs are either unaware that these opportunities exist, or deterred from engaging with the public sector procurement market, or they’re disadvantaged. Or all three.

This is nothing new in the UK; over a decade ago such approaches were considered unacceptable and needed to be dumped, which led to the development of the Digital Marketplace and its 2 associated Crown Commercial Service (CCS) commercial agreements: G-Cloud and Digital Outcomes and Specialists.

New approaches have been tried and tested for over a decade: now let’s mainstream them

The Digital Marketplace has been instrumental in opening up the UK DDaT public procurement market to SMEs. In the last financial year 2021/22, UK public sector organisations spent £1.41 billion with SMEs through the Digital Marketplace.

The CCS annual report and accounts for 2021 to 2022 states that £2.22 billion was spent directly with SMEs that year across all their commercial agreements (at the time of writing, CCS’s website lists over 110 ‘live’ agreements). The Digital Marketplace and its 2 agreements therefore accounted for 64% of CCS’s total direct spend with SMEs in the last financial year.

Since the Procuring and Supplying DDaT Unconference 2022 took place, 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, drawing on various better practices published in the open by reformers from around the world. This includes the UK Digital Marketplace and the Government Digital Service work on contract simplification, which was collaboratively delivered with the CCS Commercial Policy team.

So, what’s next?

We know from the first Procuring and Supplying DDaT Unconference held in 2019 that there’s real interest from a wide range of professional practitioners and open government campaigners, to discuss and collectively address important subjects like this.

Now that we’re able to manage our working time around Covid-19, we kicked things off with this year’s unconference in collaboration with techUK, and to build on this we would like to welcome more people into this global community.

If you work in areas such as commercial, procurement, public finance management, public governance, transparency, supply chain management, legal, contract management or DDaT, or you’re interested in any of the subjects covered in this mini series of blog posts and would like to contribute your perspectives and experience, please get in touch and we’ll plan our next sessions.