Greater Manchester’s ICT procurement has grown by more than 20%
On 27 March techUK kicked off its new regional spotlight series. In this series techUK will shine the spotlight on different regional tech ecosystems to help our members understand what the local govtech opportunities are. We were delighted to be joined by Tussell, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and DAC Beachcroft who kindly hosted us too.
This event was part of the Digital City Festival where we learned about the current tech landscape, latest technologies, and procurement trends for Greater Manchester.
Gus Tugendhat, CEO of Tussell, started off the session by looking at what the data is telling us about Greater Manchester’s public sector procurement and the tech space.
We learned that Greater Manchester’s ICT procurement has grown by more than 20% per annum since FY 2018/2019 driven by NHS bodies, as wider public sector bodies in Greater Manchester spent £433M on IT in FY21/22, of which £104M was by Local Authorities. Only London and West Midlands spent more on ICT last year than Greater Manchester.
It is interesting to note that Greater Manchester makes less use of frameworks to purchase IT than the Local Govt average and G-cloud is the most widely framework for ICT procurement by local authorities in Greater Manchester since 2020, making up over 1/3 of the total value of call-offs. Also, the proportion of Greater Manchester ICT spend directly with SMEs has doubled over four years but is still only 12% of the total.
At a national level, in FY21/22 the wider public sector spent £17bn on ICT, maintaining the high levels of spending reached during the pandemic and the local government portion is a large and stable market accounting for about 4% of its total third-party procurement spend.
We also heard from Phil Swan, Director for Digital at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, who described the Greater Manchester cyber cluster formed of businesses, academia, government, and other initiatives as well as their growth journey. In 2023, their priorities are focused on digitally enabling a greener, fairer and more prosperous city-region for everyone by building digital skills and literacy, strengthening their digital talent pipeline, extending their world-class digital infrastructure, tech and data and harnessing academia, testbeds and research.
It was also great to hear from Chris Air, Partner, Technology and data protection and Oliver Crich, Partner, Public Procurement at DAC Beachcroft LLP. They spoke about the data protection within the public sector procurement and the problems and potential in the public sector tech space.
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Ileana Lupsa
Ileana Lupsa is the Programme Manager for Local Public Services and Nations and Regions, at techUK.
Matt Robinson
Matt is techUK’s Head of Nations and Regions.
Georgina Maratheftis
Georgina is techUK’s Associate Director for Local Public Services
techUK – Building Stronger Local Economies
techUK champions the tech sector throughout the UK. We work with local authorities, devolved government, and local and national policy makers to advocate for the tech sector in strengthening economic growth and resilience. We provide opportunities for our members and local stakeholders to meet, build relationships, and collaborate to drive forward local projects. For more information or to get in touch, please visit our Nations and Regions Hub and click ‘contact us’.
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