Recommendation 5

Central functions, such as procurement, have not made significant progress in treating digital programmes differently from physical infrastructure programmes. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority is responsible for assuring major programmes across government and has started to appoint people with digital expertise onto review teams. However, CDDO is working with the central functions on some of the broader challenges associated with understanding and embedding digital thinking into the areas for which they are responsible, aiming to address these by 2025. The civil service is more specialised than it was 10 years ago but is still quite generalist and policy-driven overall. The types of challenge are: • Departments find it easier to secure capital funding than for ongoing resource allocations to run services. However, limiting resource expenditure on systems can be a false economy. Cuts can have a devastating future impact and exacerbate existing problems with legacy systems. • Procurement processes are considered inflexible and do not comfortably fit with the complexities and uncertainties of digital programmes. Departments often cannot precisely define and scope their requirements yet continue with procurements and expect suppliers to make priced proposals as if these uncertainties were not a problem. Once awarded, contract lots are not always allocated to best fit the delivery plan and focusing on cost minimisation rather than best outcome can lead to defensive behaviours from all parties rather than constructive partnership. Recommendation 5: Central functions should write to CDDO by December 2023 to describe their strategy and plans to achieve the necessary digital reforms to central processes so CDDO can identify what blockers and disagreements exist, and how to resolve them.