#government-procurement

#government-procurement

The UK Home Office has upped its planned spending on external data and tech consultants by £100 million to a maximum of £350 million. The move follows a six-month delay to the start of a deal designed to provide external skills for the central government department's Data Services & Analytics (DSA) service. This comes despite the government's promise to cut spending on consultants and warnings that the shortage of internal skills was holding up digital transformation.

Not to be outdone by the makers of ChatGPT and Claude, who each agreed to sell their services to the government for $1 per agency, Google has agreed to even deeper discount terms, pitching its various government-capable AI products for just $0.47 per agency, valid through 2026. The half-a-buck Google AI deal is part of the General Services Administration's OneGov purchasing strategy that seeks to streamline the purchasing of products for federal agencies.

We are grateful for AWS's partnership as GSA continues to equip agencies with modern solutions at scale and at savings. Through this unique partnership, the federal government is poised to deliver on President Trump's AI Action Plan and solidify its position as the global AI leader.

"We gave them everything we had. They looked at it. They assessed it. They said, yes, that's all fine... The gowns are approved," Samek told the court, arguing that the government had knowingly signed off on PPE Medpro's offer during the Covid-19 procurement rush - only to regret it later amid public scrutiny and political fallout.