Recommendation 10

We observed that it felt like procurement and digital commercial activity sits in a lot of places and different organisations. We therefore asked whether there was a clear sense of who was ultimately responsible for delivering the improvements to digital procurement that government needs to make, and whether Departments shared our concerns that procurement and digital commercial activity does not sit with anyone as a number one priority, and that there is therefore a lack of accountability. The Cabinet Office told us it could “entirely understand why you would draw that from the [NAO] report” and that “ultimately, the buck stops with the Cabinet Office, because we are responsible for all procurement”.14 However, the Cabinet Office also told us that the new Centre of Excellence will have “reporting lines” to both the Cabinet Office “and, ultimately to” DSIT.15 But ultimately the Centre of Excellence may only have an advisory role and digital procurement may still be led by non–digital specialists. The new Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence