Conclusion 4

GCF’s current plans for training to build digital commercial expertise across the civil service are insufficient to bring about the transformative change needed to improve government’s digital commercial activity. GCF acknowledges that government needs to do more to build digital commercial skills across the base and lift the whole level. Specialist skills needed include people with the experience and expertise to deal with the most senior commercial digital experts in suppliers and global ‘big tech’ companies. GCF’s examples of the general training and development programmes it is delivering to civil servants are not sufficiently targeted at delivering the digital commercial skills that government most needs. GCF accepts that more could be done but has not yet set out what that would look like in practice. We are also concerned that some bigger departments are better served with digital skills with the potential to work with their commercial teams than some of the smaller ones. But GCF could not say whether this needed a set of commercial people with digital skills in every department. 5 recommendation a. The Cabinet Office and DSIT should, within 6 months, set out how it will ensure that departments have the digital commercial skills and expertise they need, including training, awareness, and whether senior digital commercial specialists are needed in each department. b. The Cabinet Office and DSIT should, in setting out their response above, explicitly state how they will overhaul the ratio of digital commercial experts relative to the wider commercial function and ensure that the views of digital experts are given due prominence and properly considered throughout the lifecycle of contracting for digital technology.