UK government to open £16B IT services competition after 6-month delay

UK government is set to crack open the pork barrel for up to £16 billion in contracts for a range of IT services. The buying framework was delayed by six months and the total pot of spending is now potentially 25 percent bigger than the previous proposal.

In a notice published earlier this month to alert tech suppliers, Crown Commercial Service (CCS), which works across the UK government as an executive agency of the Cabinet Office, said it would launch the invitation to tender notice for the Technology Services 4 framework on March 21, 2025.

The framework agreement, which strives to secure attractive pricing for public sector bodies based on a nominal value of work, was first brought to the market as a prior information notice in September 2023, when CCS said it would open competition on October 15, 2024. At that time, it said the total maximum value would be £12 billion.

An update from the CCS late last year explained that the procurement had been put back because of a delay to the introduction of the Procurement Act, which came into force in February.

Among the changes introduced in the UK's new procurement law are the ability to exclude suppliers on the basis of past behavior and the creation of a debarment list that details the suppliers set to be excluded from public sector procurement for up to five years.

"Suppliers who take part in illegal cartel activity such as bid-rigging, price fixing or market sharing risk being excluded from public procurement unless they can demonstrate that they have 'self-cleaned' so that the wrongdoing that led to the exclusion won't happen again," guidance from the Competition and Markets Authority said.

The most recent market engagement notice for Technology Services 4 states that the government is looking to procure technology and digital consultancy services, transition and service integration and management, end-user services, infrastructure services, live service management and maintenance, asset management, application development and lifecycle management services, data management, security management, and transformation services. ®