The Government Digital Service (GDS) has taken further steps to make the Digital Marketplace available overseas, beginning its discovery work in a handful of countries.
It has also issued two procurement notices for partners to explore foreign governments’ digital capabilities and supply chains.
GDS announced the plan for the Global Digital Marketplace earlier this year, saying the move was aimed at helping other governments make their procurement more transparent. It will be focused largely on digital, data and technology (DDaT) suppliers, and open to large companies and SMEs.
One of the notices is focused on DDaT and commercial capabilities in other nations, taking in the range of skills, maturity of existing professions, learning and development offers and the extent of insourcing and outsourcing.
It indicates that some scoping work has been done and that a discovery phase is set to begin this month in six countries, which are unnamed but located in Latin America, South East Asia and Southern Africa. This is set to go on until March of next year.
It says the work will scope how to address gaps in their capabilities, pointing out that governments with shortages in DDaT skills will struggle to transform services.
Market factors
The second notice is focused on routes to market and supply chains, with the work to look at the extent to which they exist, their maturity and the level to which they are functioning.
It says that if the supply chains in the markets are not evolving or growing due to inefficiencies or barriers to trade, it will affect the quality of products and services and lead to poor value for money.
An early market engagement has already taken place, which GDS says has showed the political will for change. The next stage will be a discovery process also focused on six countries in the regions mentioned above.
Earlier this year Warren Smith, director of the Digital Marketplace, told UKAuthority that that any offer will be tailored to what individual countries need, and is likely to go further than the procurement platform itself.
Image by NASA, CC BY 2.0
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