Recommendation 18

The NAO found that Cabinet Office does not have a plan for how it will develop the specialist digital skills or commercial capability required. In an area as important as digital procurement, it found that it was essential that government had “a clear view of the skills it needs, the gaps and the actions required to fill them”.27 We therefore asked what Cabinet Office and DSIT were doing to address that gap. Cabinet Office told us that it was 24 Qq 51, 57 25 Q 57 26 Q 51 27 C&AG’s Report, paras 11, 2.21 14 looking at introducing annual capability assessments for every government function, and it was hoping to re–introduce departmental capability reviews to enable it to “understand what the landscape looks like”. When asked how long this would take, Cabinet Office said that it did not think that it would take a long time to implement, but that the harder thing would be to make it work effectively.28