Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 26
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)
We observed that our predecessor Committee saw examples where departments made mistakes in designing and procuring digital programmes, particularly where legacy technology was involved. We were concerned that some larger departments are better served with digital skills than some of the smaller ones, but that even in large departments this expertise is not always utilised. We asked whether there would be a set of commercial people with digital skills in every department. The Cabinet Office told us that it did not know. We therefore asked what government was doing to make sure every single department was up to speed. GDS told us that often, the challenges and the ability to meet them were not evenly distributed across departments, and that the departments with the biggest challenge were often the teams who did not have sufficient scale. It said that this was dependent on the size of a department’s digital estate, rather than the department’s size alone.44 41 Qq 32, 39 42 Q 51 43 Qq 38, 41, 56 44 Qq 55–58 17
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.