Breakdown of an £18bn public sector opportunity

The UK GovTech market is estimated to be worth £18bn in sales. That’s a lot of business! But where is this money being spent? Here we take a look!

There are many different frameworks and ways that government are procuring their technology, some bigger than others. With each framework usually designated to different technologies, and some more SME friendly than others, we’ve taken a look at which ones have the most business going through them.

Although some of these frameworks may have closed for now, it’s worth suppliers knowing about them for their long term plans – as they may want to get on to them when the next iteration comes around!

The Digital Marketplace

We always say it, but we’re big advocates of the Digital Marketplace. G-Cloud and Digital Outcomes & Specialists are both the go-to places to be if you’re looking to sell cloud tech to public sector organisations.

G-Cloud to date has had around £5.1bn exchange hands through the framework, with an amazing 45% of that going to SMEs. For a supplier of cloud-based support and software, G-Cloud is a no brainer if you want to make sure you’re in the right place to win public sector contracts.

Digital Outcomes & Specialists, on the other hand, is a framework specifically for outcomes and the provision of teams to meet public sectors’ objectives. Central Government alone has spent £1.45bn on the framework to help meet their digital transformation aims and 34% of suppliers winning contracts through it are SMEs. The DOS framework, now in it’s third iteration with the fourth going live this October, takes a bit more time and effort than G-Cloud to win business through it (suppliers have to bid on opportunities) – but the business is there!

Both of these Digital Marketplace frameworks are closed for applications until 2020, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on them and considering them for your public sector strategy.

Innovative Technology frameworks

With the launch of the Government’s Technology Innovation Strategy this year, the government launched Spark: The Technology Innovation Marketplace. Working a little bit differently from frameworks, Spark is run as a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) – meaning suppliers can join anytime during its lifecycle. So, there’s nothing to worry about if you’re brand new to this one!

The DPS is estimated by CCS to have at least £20m sales go through it during the first year, with 70% of that going to SMEs. The government have made it clear that the marketplace’s introduction is to make it a lot easier for smaller companies to sell their innovative technology. As a brand-new introduction to CCS’ procurement channels, it’ll be interesting to watch this one grow!

Another new Dynamic Purchasing System on the block is the Scottish Government’s IoT DPS. Although no estimated worth has been given for this one, it has been given a wide scope and gives suppliers the chance to offer a wide range of IoT technology to buyers to the Scottish Government.

Big big frameworks!

Aside from the CCS’ flagship Digital Marketplace, they have some other big frameworks out there. These frameworks can make up a large chunk of the spending.

Network Services for example, is for the provision of communications software and services. With the second iteration of the framework (NS2) going live this August, it’s been predicted to be worth a massive £5bn over it’s lifetime!

The bad news for those interested in getting on to the framework is that NS2 is running until at least 2022, with an option of a further year. However, you’ll want to make sure you know about this one for when it comes back around in the future.

Another one of the recent big players is Technology Products and Associated Services, or TePAS for short. Although this one runs for a minimum of two years (CCS can extend it by a further two if they wish) and has already closed for applications, it’s estimated worth of £6.5bn has opened up great opportunities to the suppliers who got on it.

The continued arrival of new frameworks and Dynamic Purchasing Systems, with more focus on innovation, is proving to open up a lot of doors for suppliers – especially SMEs. With around £18bn worth of public sector technology being bought last year according to GlobalData, knowing what’s coming up and how to utilise these frameworks has never been more important.