Buying British Innovation
Buying British Innovation: Public Procurement’s Crossroads Moment: a new report into Britain’s opportunity to drive economic growth and better public services through buying from UK startups and the barriers stopping us from achieving this.
Increasingly, we’ve been hearing from founders about the need to fix public procurement.
Of course, part of this is about backing British tech. We want to make sure that, as well as the wider support on capital, policy and lots more – the Government puts its money where its mouth is. But this isn’t just self-interest, it’s about what we as a country leave on the table by failing to take the best innovations from the ecosystem.
If we want to ensure that British public services can succeed in an age where our country is in a tricky spot of rising taxes and rising demand for great public services – British tech startups are absolutely part of the answer.
Andy Burnham agrees. His new administration has already signalled their strong intent to reform public procurement, with priority placed on ‘Buying British’ to create jobs and drive local and national economic growth. This is hugely welcome.
Recent reforms to social value mark a positive step in simplifying elements of the procurement process for startups. But signals from the top of government alone will not be enough to turn what has become a cumbersome, bureaucratic and fundamentally broken process.
Speaking with founders everyday, we consistently hear a passion to deliver work for government, paired with a frustration for the complexities of navigating procurement.
In our new report, we map these challenges on to the government sales cycle highlighting areas for reform at every stage of the buying process.
These include: reducing barriers to access important frameworks; issuing guidance on direct awards; and driving better pre-market engagement activity with high-growth companies through more data capture and accountability.
The report also highlights a particular problem: a consistent pattern of opportunities for startups being snatched away by in-house development teams with seemingly no appraisal of value for money or impact assessment. This deters startups, wastes valuable public resources and essentially makes the government and our startups competitors rather than collaborators.
If we want faster, more accessible public procurement that delivers better outcomes, we need to be honest about where we are today. We need to get specific about what the issues are and what a failure to fix this means.