Public Procurement and Property

Digital Technology Assurance Framework – Procurement insights

February 8, 2024 by Emma Hall No Comments | Category Contract management, suppliers

We welcome a guest blog from Laura Johnstone-Continuous Improvement lead for the Scottish Government’s Digital Assurance Office (DAO). Today Laura is going to introduce her team’s work and highlight how the #PowerOfProcurement is essential in delivering better outcomes for Scotland. 

Background 

The DAO administer the Technology Assurance Framework (TAF), which was introduced in 2017 to support digital programmes and projects to deliver successful outcomes.  We work with project teams from a wide range of organisations, providing independent assurance to major digital projects and new or transformed digital services. We do this through major digital project reviews and Digital Scotland Service Standard assessments.  

Our Continuous Improvement team has been cataloguing and analysing the recommendations made from these assurance reviews and want to share the insights from this work to help others to successfully deliver digital projects.  

Pre-procurement assurance 

Pre-procurement is a key project stage for major digital project reviews and makes up about a quarter of reviews conducted.  

In our analysis of recommendations from major digital reviews we have found three distinct themes relating to procurement and contract management. 

These relate to : 

• invitation to tender (ITT) and evaluation criteria 
• procurement strategy and planning 
• contract management and supplier relations  

You can read about the themes in detail on our latest insight blog.  

We have already published insight blogs on the 2022/23 assurance themes, and started publishing our first case study series, focusing on the Census 2022 programme!

You can keep up to date with the work of the Continuous Improvement team by subscribing to the Digital blog. If you want to get involved – or have thoughts on what insights would be helpful to share – contact us at DigitalAssurance@gov.scot.  

For further information on public procurement in Scotland please visit www.gov.scot/procurement

Please email enquiries to scottishprocurement@gov.scot

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Tags: Contract management, Digital Assurance Office, invitation to tender, Scottish Procurement, Suppliers

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