Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 13
13
Accepted
DSIT's authority questioned regarding Centre of Excellence's impact on departmental spending
Recommendation
The Cabinet Office and DSIT told us that the role of the Centre of Excellence will include working further with departments, for example to help them produce much stronger forecast data on what they are intending to spend, and helping them optimise their use of cloud by avoiding over–purchasing and incurring unnecessary costs. DSIT explained that, through the Centre, it would be working with departments to get much stronger forecast data on procurement and digital spend. The Cabinet Office told us that it aimed for the Centre to help align departments on their requirements to enable government to leverage its purchasing power. DSIT similarly said that, through the Centre, it would need to make sure that departments were seeking to procure the right things and were not “overprovisioning or over–spec’ing what they need”.19 We are concerned that DSIT will not have sufficient authority over other departments to produce the scale of change needed.
Government Response Summary
The government accepts the recommendation, stating that the GCF Digital & Data Team will establish a process by December 2025 to leverage commercial insights from data across government. This will include developing a standard framework for procurement platforms and delivering a central digital platform.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
5.1 The government agrees with the committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: December 2025 5.2 The GCF Digital & Data Team will set out the process to leverage commercial insights from data held across the eco-system, which will include the development of a standard framework for procurement platforms as well as the delivery of the central digital platform, leveraging data held in procurement and back-office systems for use across government. Further detail will be provided to the committee in December, in line with the target implementation date.