Recommendation 8

Despite the technology market being dominated by large suppliers and changes in how they choose to negotiate and exercise leverage with government, we noted that GCF only had 15 people dedicated to the full–time management of the 19 largest technology suppliers. This compares to 4 in GDS. There are additionally around 6,000 commercial people in the GCF network across government, most of whom are not technical specialists and who are responsible for procuring, or supporting procurement of, general goods and services for government. GDS has not had formal responsibility for digital procurement in the past.10 We asked whether the voice of GDS was being heard clearly enough by the commercial team. GDS told us that “it is now. To be completely transparent, that close relationship has not always been in place.” 11