#government-tech-spending

#government-tech-spending

DINUM will coordinate a cross-ministerial plan to reduce dependence on suppliers outside Europe. Each ministry will be required to develop its own plan by this fall, covering the following areas: workstations, collaboration tools, antivirus software, artificial intelligence, databases, virtualization, and network equipment.

"The Battalion Search and Rescue always carries the Electronic Frontier Foundation's zine in our desert rig. We're finding new surveillance all the time, and without a resource like that, we wouldn't know what the hell we're looking at."

The VA identified its five most widely used software vendors with the highest quantity of licenses installed, but faced challenges in determining whether it was purchasing too many or too few of these software licenses.

The TMF modernized the U.S. Department of Agriculture's specialty crops inspection system that ensures safe food reaches school lunches and military rations, eliminating paper-based processes and saving $1.72 million annually while inspectors now use tablets instead of clipboards to process over 60 billion pounds of produce.

Watching how much the team was able to get done quickly was "astonishing," said Mikey Dickerson, a senior advisor for the Tech Viaduct. Those behind Tech Viaduct say that Elon Musk's team caused harm that will take years to undo, but it also showed how much can get done in government when you have the force of political will behind you.

Understanding the difference in purpose Unlike private businesses, which exist to make a profit, public institutions are designed to create impact - especially social and economic outcomes that benefit everyone, not just paying customers. A public agency doesn't measure its success in revenue or margins, but in how much it improves lives, builds equity and maintains public trust. This doesn't mean budgets and spending don't matter - they absolutely do - but money is not the goal. It's the tool.

The UK's tax collector is budgeting to spend more than £2 billion on new tech deals in the next couple of years, including a contract set for AWS and another for Capgemini to be awarded without competition. According to a spreadsheet of the procurement pipeline for this year and next, His Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is starting with a data warehouse transformation program with a contract value estimated at £410 million.

IT and tech suppliers to the UK public sector with the fastest-growing revenues increased incomes by an average of 1.8x and £3.8m each between 2023 and 2025. The fastest-growing companies were in the defence sector, with one company - SRC UK - growing revenue by 16x across the period. Those are some of the findings of public sector IT research specialist Tussell in its annual Tech200 report on the fastest-growing tech suppliers to the public sector.

This is a new unit within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), led by Tristan Thomas, formerly of Monzo, and Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy. It aims to bring together the best civil service operators alongside leading private sector disruptors and transformation specialists. The plan is to use CustomerFirst expertise to rewire government services, making use of AI and best practices from the private sector.

The UK government has delayed publication of its long-promised digital roadmap, a plan it says could eventually help save up to £45 billion of taxpayers' money by modernizing creaking public sector IT. Speaking to MPs last week, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) permanent secretary Emran Mian said the Government Digital and AI Roadmap - meant to improve data sharing across government - was due by the end of last year, but had hit stumbling blocks.

The role was flagged up last week by the Office of Management and Budget, which highlighted a $198,200-$228,000 salary for the Washington DC-based role. The successful candidate will manage "the Federal Information Technology (IT) portfolio by establishing policies and standards for the use of IT, overseeing agency budgeting and management of IT, and assessing agency information security and cybersecurity policies and practices." The listing is blunt about other aspects of the role.