GDS hints at Digital Marketplace strategy of the future
Scaling the Digital Marketplace, increasing self-service capability and improving supplier-buyer relationships among key targets for the next fiscal year
The Government Digital Service (GDS) has outlined its strategy for the Digital Marketplace for the year ahead, pledging to help the wider public sector get involved.
The full Digital Marketplace strategy will be published in the coming weeks, but now that the GDS has its budget for the coming financial year, which begins next week, it has published a sneak preview.
Warren Smith, acting as Digital Marketplace lead following former chief Tony Singleton's departure earlier this year, said that in the last 12 months, the government has made progress by listening to buyers and suppliers.
The Digital Marketplace is home to the G-Cloud framework and Digital Outcomes and Services - the soon-to-be-launched replacement for the Digital Services framework. Although G-Cloud has been widely praised, figures show that most sales through the framework are with central government bodies.
Smith said that scaling the Digital Marketplace and getting the wider public sector on board with the frameworks is a priority this year.
"We will work to make the Digital Marketplace scalable, reusable and shareable, in line with other cross-government platforms," he said. "We want public sector contracting organisations to be able to open and award their own frameworks on the Digital Marketplace."
Self-service is also a key focus for the year ahead, Smith said, vowing to help buyers become "self-sufficient" by providing necessary training and support.
He added that making the framework more transparent is important.
"We'll make our Digital Marketplace service usage data more open," Smith said. "We would like suppliers to be able to monitor their own performance working with government. Built-in analytics will enable us and our suppliers to design with data, to continue iterating services in response to real-time user behaviour and user needs."
G-Cloud supplier Imerja's managing director Ian Jackson welcomed the proposals.
"Any policy to encourage the wider adoption of G-Cloud and the Digital Marketplace can only be for the better," he said. "It is a way to drive down the cost of IT delivery. I would encourage it as an SMB, but also as a taxpayer. We have to continue to drive down the cost of IT."
Fordway's managing director Richard Blandford agreed, but said that encouraging the wider public sector to use G-Cloud is not the only priority, and that changes need to be made to validation and assurance policies in the public sector.
He said the new self-certification process used by suppliers is open to abuse, and added measures need to be put in place so that independent bodies can authenticate any claims made.
"I'm not saying they do it, but there's the opportunity for suppliers to make claims they cannot live up to," he said. "It puts the onus on the buyer to check. [The government] has the right to audit - we've been audited - but for new suppliers coming into G-Cloud, they can make whatever claims they like until they get found out and told off. There needs to be a halfway house that gives a validation."