Sharing to succeed: From CCS to GCA – what has really happened to government commercial?
This post is part of "Sharing to succeed" - a blog series from the techUK Central Government Council exploring how knowledge sharing and collaboration between buyers and suppliers can be a key to successful market engagement, resulting in procurements that support digital transformation. You can find the introduction to the series here.
Author
Giles Hartwright
Associate Partner, Public Sector Consulting, IBM
Giles is leader in IBM's Consulting business. He joined IBM in 2024 having previously served as the UK Government Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), specialising in transformation, AI and Legacy Modernisation. Here he worked alongside departments to identify cross cutting issues and develop solutions in collaboration with them.
Giles ran the X Government Chief Technology Officer Council bringing together CTO’s from across public sector. Through this Giles built coalitions of organisations to support central government initiatives. Prior to this he led the Cross Government Interoperability programme through the Covid 19 pandemic ensuring departments could continue to function seamlessly through the change to remote working.
Giles also has a background in the UK Military having served as an Officer in the Royal Engineers. At IBM, Giles leverages public-sector experience to help government clients navigate the challenges of modernizing IT infrastructure and services.
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When Crown Commercial Service was created, its role was relatively clear. It was there to help government buy common goods and services more efficiently, aggregate demand across departments and negotiate better deals with suppliers. It built and managed frameworks, provided procurement routes and helped departments avoid running dozens of separate competitions for the same thing.
For many organisations, CCS became the front door into government procurement. If you wanted to sell technology, professional services, cloud or digital capability into the public sector, chances are you went through a CCS framework at some point.
The new Government Commercial Agency is designed to be broader than that.
Rather than simply being the body that runs frameworks and central buying arrangements, the GCA brings together a range of Cabinet Office commercial functions into a single organisation. The aim is not just to help departments buy, but to strengthen the whole commercial lifecycle across government.
That includes strategic sourcing, supplier management, commercial capability, complex negotiations, market shaping, resilience and contract management. In effect, the ambition is to create a more joined-up commercial function for government, rather than having procurement delivery, policy and commercial leadership spread across multiple teams.
There is also an important shift in authority and accountability.
Under the old structure, CCS sat within the Cabinet Office, but wider commercial accountability was distributed across a number of different teams and functions. Under the new model, there is a clearer line of sight from commercial policy through to procurement execution. The Government Commercial Agency remains within the Cabinet Office, but with a more unified leadership structure and a single organisation responsible for a much larger part of government's commercial activity.
For suppliers, this could mean a more consistent approach across departments, fewer duplicated conversations and potentially a more strategic relationship with government as a customer. For departments, it should mean easier access to commercial expertise, better use of data, stronger contract management and more consistency in how suppliers are engaged.
That said, it is worth being realistic about what this means in practice.
Most frameworks, contracts and routes to market remain the same for now. Many of the same people are still involved and departments will not suddenly procure in a completely different way overnight. The real question is whether this change leads to genuinely better commercial outcomes over time: more strategic procurement, stronger supplier relationships, better contract delivery and ultimately better value for taxpayers.
As with most changes in government, the structure may change quickly but the impact takes longer to emerge. It will take time for the new organisation to bed in, for new ways of working to settle and for people to see whether the Government Commercial Agency is genuinely different from what came before, or simply Crown Commercial Service with a broader remit and a new name.
