Why we ❤ the Digital Outcomes & Specialists Framework!

So, why do we love the DOS Framework?

1.  It’s relatively straight forward to get on – although we had contact from someone that did fail to get on. Contrast that with its predecessor Digital Services 2 (see an excellent blog from Harry Metcalf here) and you will understand the smiles.
2.  The contract terms are in plain English and are not onerous. Wonderful for an SME
3. Opportunities are posted in the open! That’s right…. IN. THE. OPEN! Not behind closed doors or in dusty Whitehall backrooms….
4. Feedback is being acted upon. There is a real sense of participation in this – feedback is acted upon and while not all the suggested improvements are immediate they do seem to be being enacted. The focus on user needs is very evident here for us.

However, It’s no 3 that really works for us & our clients, because…

Buyers have to:

•  Write a brief
• Publish your shortlisting and evaluation criteria upfront
• Give an indication of budget
• Publish for the whole world to see!

Part of our DNA is the desire to help small companies enter into and be successful in the UK Govt tech space. Since going it alone from my contracting days in October 2014 we have successfully helped over 70 companies enter into the market with upwards of 70% of them selling something via a number of frameworks.

Frameworks such as:

•   G-Cloud 6, 7 & 8
•  Digital Services 2
•  Digital Outcomes & Specialists 1
•  Network services 1
• Application Design & Development Services
• Technology Products 2 (shhh it’s still on Alcatel)

What we do best is share our experience as buyers. So the call off process for Digital Outcomes & Specialists really gives us an opportunity to share this extensively. What we do is advise our clients on how to respond properly. The amount of times as a buyer I’ve seen tenders that don’t answer the question is astounding. Public procurement rules mean that you can only evaluate what’s on the paper in front of you. Prior knowledge and assumption play no part in a fair, open and transparent procurement.

When our clients are shortlisted on a DOS call off, they call us and get us to work on their bid. We are very skilled evaluators especially in tech & digital services. We score the responses as if we were buying it ourselves based on the published information. They then improve their bid response based on our feedback – and guess what? We (our clients & us) are WINNING! To date we must’ve won around £2.5m of COLD opportunities from lots 1 & 2 including work for some very big departments and the NHS. Consequently, these guys are now going onto being considered for much more sizable work having completed the work so successfully (rule #2 – do good work!). With most of them having never been interested in Government work before to see them enthused and super keen about the next iteration is frankly amazing.

 So, a very big WELL DONE to the Digital Marketplace & Crown Commercial Services teams for yet again introducing truly ground breaking piece of procurement & delivering a product that really does keep everything Open, Fair & Transparent. Please keep it up! When things are this promising I’m happy to chew on some humble pie…

Digital Outcomes and Specialists is due to reopen for applications in November. Please contact us for more info as to our services and how we can help you make something of your investment in this remarkable framework.