Conclusion 2

The Cabinet Office and DSIT have many expectations for the Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence to deliver the large–scale improvements needed to current digital commercial activities, as well as its existing aims. Government’s current digital commercial approaches and practices require improvement in a range of areas, including creating a clear sourcing strategy setting out what government wants and how it will procure it. Yet government does not have sufficient skills to manage the depth and breadth of its digital commercial needs. There is an insufficient level of digital commercial skills across departments, and some Departments do not make enough use of their digital expertise. The objective of the new Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence is to identify opportunities for further reform and improvements needed to enable tech startups, and small–and medium–sized enterprises to access government contracts. Cabinet Office and DSIT appear to have much more extensive and wide–ranging aims for the work of the Centre of Excellence. These include fully harnessing the capability of the digital and commercial functions; ensuring better data on technology spending; leveraging government’s buying power with technology suppliers; helping departments to optimise their use of the cloud; and digitally upskilling commercial staff across government. The Centre of Excellence will have just 24 experts to undertake its roles, compared to 6,000 mainly general commercial people working across government. recommendation The Cabinet Office and DSIT should, in line with their Treasury Minute response, set out: what the Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence is going to do to address the problems with digital commercial activity as well as its published aims for SMEs and startups; and how it will balance its resources and time between activity facing government and suppliers respectively.