Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 13
27th Report - Government’s relationship with digital technology suppliers
Published 6 Jun 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Government’s relationship with digital technology suppliers All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
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.
From: Public Accounts Committee, 27th Report - Government’s relationship with digital technology suppliers (HC 640), 6 June 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twenty-seventh Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 6 August 2025).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twenty-seventh report from Session 2024-26
Published 18 September 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each of the recommendations in the report, with most carrying a target implementation date of December 2025.
- On roles and responsibilities, it says the Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence (DCCoE) has been launched as a joint Cabinet Office and DSIT team and is "working to formalise the roles and responsibilities" between digital and commercial teams.
- On skills, it sets a three-phased approach for the Government Commercial Function: a first phase by September 2025, a second by March 2026, and a final phase "to be confirmed".
- On the Digital, Data and Technology Playbook, it says a team is working with GDS "to launch a publication in December 2025", bringing it up to date with current practices.
- On spending data, it says the GCF Digital & Data Team "will set out the process" to use commercial insights from data held across government, with "further detail" to be provided to the Committee in December.