Recommendation 24

We therefore asked why this was the case, and whether this created a skills gap. GCF told us that “a significant amount of commercial training and development” went on across government. It explained that this was more general and applied to “all complex outsourcing and procurement services”.40 GDS told us that a few departments that had been using 34 Qq 64–65 35 C&AG’s Report, para 2.4 36 Qq 16, 64 37 Q 65 38 Q 66 39 Qq 32, 38; C&AG’s Report para 1.12 40 Q 38 16 cloud platforms for several years had their own strong (digital) training programme and curriculum, but that this was not universal across the system. GCF acknowledged that it had not developed examples of digital training within departments into training in core digital commercial skills across the whole community. Both the Cabinet Office and GCF accepted there was more for them to do. We therefore asked if they would give serious consideration to building digital commercial skills into future training. The Cabinet Office said that it would “definitely do that”.41