The Government has proposed a National Digital Exchange to make public sector technology buying faster, smarter and capable of saving £1.2 billion a year. At last, the procurement cupboard has been given a search bar, although it is returning 47 results for printer cable and asking the user to complete a declaration of interest.
The platform is intended to offer pre approved deals, nationally negotiated prices and an AI powered tool that matches buyers with suppliers. It is still in early development, which means the state has successfully purchased the concept of a website and is now waiting for delivery.
At the Ministry of Sensible Receipts, purchasing envoy Kevin Basket welcomed the plan. “Teams need the right technology quickly,” he said. “So we have taught a machine to ask what they need before sending them six forms about it.”
The Government also wants public sector organisations to rate and review the technology they buy. Hospitals, schools and departments may soon be able to explain which products worked, which failed and which required a specialist consultant to locate the on button.
Faye Clipboard, director of Digitised Queueing, said the exchange would transform procurement. “Officials will be able to compare suppliers in hours rather than months,” she said, “provided they first obtain approval to compare suppliers in hours rather than months.”
The scheme aims to increase small business involvement in government contracts by 40 per cent within three years. One start up arrived with a genuinely useful tool and was immediately asked whether it had considered becoming a category, registering on a portal and proving that it had existed for long enough to have existed before.
Meanwhile, a fax machine has updated its professional profile to read “legacy innovation specialist” and received three endorsements from other fax machines. A three ring binder has demanded a seat on the project board because it has never once hallucinated a supplier review.
The exchange is supposed to bring the public sector closer to an app store for technology, complete with prices, reviews and fewer costly mistakes. The procurement cupboard has rated the search function one star, then opened a review process to decide whether it is authorised to submit the review. By the time approval arrives, the printer cable will be old enough to qualify as a strategic supplier.
Real story: Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
