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One year on from the launch of our #3PointPlan, we review its progress against the three pillars.

"The Three Point Plan is a simple roadmap for policy makers. It's important these are taken up" Meg Hillier, Labour MP for Shoreditch, March 2015

A year ago, George Freeman (Life Sciences Minister) helped launch our Three Point Plan on public services transformation. Our aim was to improve the engagement between the tech industry and Government. One year on, we thought it would be helpful to re-cap on our progress against the three pillars: better engagement, better information and more innovation.

The plan, developed by techUK members both large and small, is designed to bring more industry expertise and knowledge into Government and make it a more demanding customer. It also sets out how the industry will work with Government to help ministers and officials experiment and innovate more successfully with technology. The Three Point Plan has been shared with tech leaders across Government, Parliamentarians and has been warmly received by Government departments.

• Has there been better engagement? 

Twenty seven events with ten different departments across a range of topics

Since the launch of the plan, we have held twenty seven events with ten different central government departments and agencies including HMRC, DWP, FCO, CCS, DEFRA, GDS and CESG as part of our market engagement programme. These have ranged from general briefings as well as pre-procurement market engagement sessions to seek views from industry.

• We kicked off the year with a market engagement event with HMRC, where Steve Walters, HMRC CTO, presented their blueprints post the Aspire contract which runs out in 2017. The event was specifically for companies who were not actively engaged with HMRC and was a great opportunity for HMRC to engage with new suppliers through techUK.
• Most recently, techUK, CCS and GDS hosted fourteen market engagement events across seven cities, from London to Newcastle for buyers and suppliers ahead of the G-Cloud 7. 

• 88% of buyers that attended said the event has encouraged them to buy via the Digital Marketplace in the future. 
• 79% of suppliers that attended found the event either excellent or very good. You can find out more on GDS's blog on our joint events.

• Better information?

We have had good engagement with the Cabinet Office around the potential of open data to transform the delivery of our public services, including techUK hosting three consultations around the National Information Infrastructure. However, our offer to agree a standardised data and evaluation scheme with Government, allowing them to pick and choose suppliers more effectively has yet to be taken up. This would address the problems of wildly varying reporting requirements on public sector contracts, which had the effect of making one scheme impossible to compare with another. Notably, this was an issue the Office of Fair Trading brought up in its investigation into the 'Supply of Information and Communications Technology to the Public Sector'.

We were delighted to see Paul Maltby recently appointed as Director of Data at GDS and will be picking up this point with him directly.

• More innovation?

We held our inaugural Public Services 2030 conference in March, which focused on the disruptive tech that could revolutionise our public services. We were delighted to have the former Cabinet Office Minister, Francis Maude give a keynote on the potential for innovative tech to transform public services.

In July this year, techUK announced a joint initiative with the Ministry of Defence to bring industry's inherent innovation to the challenges of UK Defence.

• More work to do

Whist there has been good progress, there is still more to do.

• Our annual survey of civil servants showed that only 19 per cent said that they had access to a wide range of suppliers, with one third stating that they only had limited access and a further 11 per cent stating that their access to suppliers was poor.
• The survey results showed widespread support for contact with suppliers before, during and after the procurement process
• Only 32% felt they had access to disruptive innovation

What's coming up?

Pitching

Our 'DWP Tech|Pitch' event was featured in Computer Weekly and is an excellent example of effective engagement to enable Government to tap into disruptive tech.

#techUKMeetUp: Digital Marketplace

techUK's Digital Marketplace meet-ups are free events to encourage buyers and suppliers to connect and maximise value from the Digital Marketplace. We are delighted to have CCS supporting our event and promoting to buyers across the public sector. DWP are confirmed to speak at the next session, sign up here.

*Watch this space*

We will shortly announce a significant early market engagement which relates to a framework that's worth up to 10 bn over the next four years. Keep an eye out on our website for more information.