Digital Procurement: A Shifting Landscape for Technology Suppliers to the UK Public Sector

Earlier this year, the National Audit Office (NAO) published its report on 'Government's approach to technology suppliers' which identified a £9 billion annual spend for digital procurement through Crown Commercial Services (CCS) frameworks (2022-23). In considering the issues with the complexities of digital procurement, the NAO expressed its concern over the risk of increased “reliance on generic commercial frameworks which are not well suited to complex requirements”. It is often the case that even tech-specific frameworks derive from generic frameworks and would benefit from being tailored further to better reflect the commercial models adopted by key technology suppliers, helping to drive value for money and reducing the procurement burden. One of the key NAO recommendations was to “define a sourcing strategy for the digital age which takes into account how to deal with ‘big tech’ and global cloud providers that are bigger than governments themselves” and, together with the introduction of flexible frameworks under the Procurement Act 2023, the UK Government’s drive for improving technology supplier engagement within digital procurement is clear.

As the UK Government’s expenditure on digital procurement has increased, the Government Digital Service (GDS) Cloud and Platforms has been working on a cloud cost data solution with initial results on this published on 17^th June 2025: Improving public sector spending with the cloud cost data solution. GDS explained that the ultimate ambition of the cloud costs data solution is to “get a central picture of the total usage and a breakdown of spend on cloud services across the public sector” so that “future cloud services will be able to be procured and provisioned in the most cost efficient manner”. The dashboard tool is expected to create a baseline to drive increased consistency in the price being paid by different contracting authorities for the same or similar cloud services. For cloud services suppliers who have significant experience dealing with the UK public sector, the increased requirement for cost transparency might be unsurprising, however, suppliers who are new to supplying to the UK public sector may question how this tool will impact future pricing discussions with public sector buyers.

Whilst the impact of the NAO findings and the cloud costs data solution is yet to be fully understood in respect of the future digital procurement landscape, several recent changes to UK Government technology frameworks have already been seen. The latest iteration of the Back Office Software (BOS) 2 Framework which went live on 5^th April 2025 introduced a new Lot 2 (for contracts valued below £5 million) which was described by CCS in its Buyer Guide to be ‘SME friendly’. Suppliers were also asked for the first time to submit maximum pricing for the BOS 2 Framework giving public sector buyers early visibility of supplier pricing and an additional benchmarking tool when deciding to make an award under the framework. As framework suppliers and public sector buyers now eagerly await the changes to the latest iteration of the G-Cloud framework (G-Cloud 15) which is the first version to be let under the Procurement Act 2023, and is expected to be the first to be an “open framework”, technology suppliers will need to continue to monitor and assess how best to adapt to the UK Government’s evolving digital procurement requirements.

If you have any questions in relation to digital procurement including the use of UK technology frameworks, please do get in touch with Hannah Barton, Alex Fallon, Martin Cook or another member of our Commercial & Technology team.

For our Bidder’s Guide to the Procurement Act 2023, please click here.