The third way: rethinking how government buys technology
Richard Davies
In 2026, most UK government departments are no longer debating what a good digital strategy looks like. Their ambition is clear: to deliver AI-enabled services, seamless citizen experiences, and data-driven decision-making – fully embedded in policy and transformation strategies.
Yet delivery often stalls in the same place it always has: after the strategy document is signed and before meaningful implementation begins. The gap between ambition and reality remains wide, driven less by technology constraints than by organisational and cultural challenges, often exacerbated by procurement processes.
The effectiveness of government delivery is in part defined by how it buys technology. Therefore, procurement is not a back-office step in transformation – it is the engine that determines whether progress accelerates or stalls. Too often today, that engine is run on two imperfect assumptions: that organisations must either buy a commercial off-the-shelf SaaS product or commission something entirely bespoke from scratch internally. In many cases, neither approach fully matches the complexity, pace, or ambition of modern public services.
Today’s procurement philosophy
Let’s looks closer at those dominant approaches to procurement. The first is the “SaaS-first” method: selecting an existing commercial product and attempting to configure it into a highly specific public sector environment. On paper, it looks efficient, but in practice, it often becomes a slow process of compromise. Government workflows are rarely standard, particularly where services are citizen-facing or involve complex regulatory rules.
As a result, SaaS platforms are stretched, reconfigured, and layered with custom integrations that were never part of the original design. It’s a bit like fitting a round peg into a square hole. Over time, something more problematic emerges, as both the peg and the hole are adapted. The SaaS product becomes heavily customised, upgrades become increasingly difficult to implement, and the original benefits of scalability and simplicity start to erode.
The second approach sits at the opposite extreme: building bespoke development from scratch. While this promises a perfect alignment to requirements, it can lead to extended delivery timelines, escalating costs, and systems that are outdated by the time they go live. In fast-moving areas such as AI-enabled case management or digital identity, that lag becomes a serious constraint.
One option is relatively quick but rigid, the other is more flexible but slow – and neither is truly sustainable for the demands of modern digital public services.
The third way: a platform approach
There is, however, a third way emerging that is increasingly shaping how advanced digital governments across Europe are approaching transformation: the platform approach. At its core, this is about reuse rather than redevelopment. Instead of starting from zero or forcing a SaaS product into an unnatural shape, governments can adopt a proven, modular digital platform and configure it for their specific context.
The key difference is that this starts from a strong foundation that’s designed to be adaptive. These platforms are already secure, tested, and scalable – often delivering around 80% of the required capability out of the box. From there, the remaining 20% is configuration rather than construction: adapting workflows, integrating local systems, and aligning to policy needs without undermining the integrity of the core platform.
The benefits are significant. Delivery becomes faster and more cost-efficient, security and resilience are embedded from the outset rather than retrofitted, and services can evolve continuously without requiring wholesale replacement.
What good looks like
If procurement is the engine of digital delivery, the question is: what does “good” looks like in practice? Good procurement prioritises capability and adaptability over cost alone. While price will always matter, the lowest-cost option rarely delivers the best long-term value. Instead, stronger emphasis should be placed on flexibility, scalability, and the ability of solutions to evolve alongside policy and user needs.
Interoperability is also often overlooked. Yet government systems cannot operate in silos, and procurement should not reinforce them. Effective frameworks reward solutions that integrate cleanly with existing systems rather than replacing them unnecessarily. At the same time, resilience and security are treated as core requirements, not optional extras. In a world of increasing cyber risk and growing reliance on AI, these capabilities must be proven at the point of procurement, not discovered during delivery.
Finally, good procurement rewards reuse because not every service requires a new system. Instead, procurement should favour platforms and partners that bring proven components into the ecosystem and extend them, rather than reinventing them each time.
Scalable platforms in action
Across Europe, this platform-based approach is already delivering at scale. Netcompany’s PULSE orchestration platform is used across transport and energy systems to coordinate complex, real-time operations. Rather than being rebuilt for each use case, it provides a reusable digital backbone that can be configured across sectors.
In Denmark, our AMI platform supports secure digital mailbox communications between government and citizens, while Scotland is rolling out similar infrastructure this year to reduce fragmentation and improve accessibility in public services.
AMPLIO is widely used across Nordic governments as a configurable case management platform, supporting multiple services from a single foundation, and ERMIS enables international tax and goods movement processes, supporting interoperability across borders while maintaining strong governance.
What connects these examples is a shared design principle: secure, trusted platforms built for reuse and continuous evolution, rather than one-off delivery.
The third way: procurement as the driver of transformation
This is where procurement becomes a core driver of digital maturity. Transformation cannot be scaled through pilots alone, and real impact comes when procurement enables repeatable, interoperable solutions to be deployed across departments and services.
The platform approach also changes how government and industry work together, shifting from one-off delivery contracts to long-term partnerships where solutions are continuously improved over time. For the UK, this shift is critical. The ambition to build a smarter state is already clear, but ambition alone does not deliver transformation. Appropriate procurement is a key driver in this journey.
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