Nice try sisters and brothers, but...
Sorry, but this will not work. The real problem is that departmental procurement policies are hopelessly outdated and unworkable. The more you threaten sanctions, the more the droids follow those policies to the letter. For example a certain large government organization I worked in had an IT procurement policy over ten years old and half the approved companies on it didn't even exist any more.
Getting the policy updated must in turn follow a vast and labyrinthine review process, consume huge resources in its own right and take years to work through, there are never sufficient resources or priority to do so and even if it were done the outcome would be out of date before it was signed off. The fact that the No.1 approved company also wrote the unworkable review procedure, effectively locking itself in place, is not taken into account. Even exhortations and threats from the Cabinet Office cannot open anything up, all they can do is rearrange a few tower contracts deckchairs.
There is in theory a very simple way out: a legally binding diktat from the top to abandon all Departmental IT procurement policies and follow a single centrally-maintained one.
Of course, in practice the drafting of that new policy will be put out to tender under an existing policy....
Biting the hand that feeds IT
