New Government IT procurement strategy welcomed by PCG

The PCG has welcomed the Government’s new IT strategy which pledges to ‘significantly open up the procurement process for large public sector projects to SMEs and new providers’. Which will in turn make it easier for contractors to get involved in Government IT projects. In the foreword to the strategy document published on Wednesday, the Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said that the aim was for Government IT to be “open to the people and organisations who use the services; and open to any provider – regardless of size”.

The strategy aims to set out the strategic direction of central government IT and the key actions that will be delivered over the next 24 months. It identified a number of challenges to the current system, including the fact that procurement timescales are too long and costly and squeeze out all but the biggest suppliers. It then set out a number of commitments as to how the Government will address these challenges, include greatly streamlining procurement and ‘specifying outcomes rather than inputs’. The document will be followed in the summer by a strategic implementation plan which will be published by the Chief Information Officer in collaboration with Government departments and HM Treasury.

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