Procurement done right: How to secure the best digital partners

Digital transformation in government lives or dies on the strength of its partnerships. The best strategies, roadmaps, and ambitions can be derailed if procurement fails to secure suppliers who truly understand the context of public services. I’ve seen it happen more than once: a well-intentioned programme stalls because the wrong partner is in the room — one that doesn’t grasp user-centred design, doesn’t adapt to the culture of delivery, or can’t balance value for money with long-term sustainability.

At the same time, I’ve also seen projects thrive because procurement was done right. The difference wasn’t in how glossy the tender documents looked, but in how much effort went into shaping the procurement so it matched the real delivery challenge.

In this article, I want to share some reflections from the projects I’ve worked on in central government. My perspective is that of a practitioner — often in the role of business analyst or service designer — who sees procurement not as a back-office formality but as the first, critical design decision that shapes everything that follows.

Understanding what you really need

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen is rushing into procurement with only a vague sense of the problem. When a requirement is framed too broadly — “we need a new digital service” — it leaves too much to interpretation. Suppliers then fill the gaps with assumptions, often shaped more by their portfolio than by your context.

I’ve found that procurement works best when there’s been enough discovery to clearly define the problem space. This doesn’t mean writing a 100-page specification. It means understanding the user need, the constraints, and the outcomes you’re aiming for. In practice, this might look like mapping the current service journey with frontline staff, or framing a problem statement that avoids jumping straight to solutions.

On one project, I was working with a department that wanted to digitise an application process. Their draft procurement documents read like a technical shopping list: “We need a portal, workflow automation, dashboards.” But when we did some quick discovery with users, the real pain point wasn’t the lack of a portal — it was that applicants had to submit the same information multiple times, across different forms.

We reframed the procurement around the outcome: reduce duplication and make it easier for applicants to complete the process once. This shifted the entire evaluation. Suppliers who wanted to sell us a portal for portal’s sake didn’t score highly. Those who could show they understood service design and could prototype around the duplication problem rose to the top.

As a business analyst, I often find myself translating fuzzy strategic goals into procurement-ready language. That clarity makes all the difference, because it gives suppliers a target to align with and it gives you a benchmark to measure them against.

Balancing value for money and long-term fit

Procurement in the public sector rightly emphasises value for money. But too often, I’ve seen that phrase taken to mean “lowest day rate wins.” This is a false economy. A partner who charges less but can’t deliver at the right quality will cost you far more in delays, rework, and frustrated stakeholders.

What I’ve learned is that the best procurement balances immediate costs with long-term fit. That means asking:

• Does this supplier understand the standards we’re working to, like GDS service design principles?

• Have they shown they can work in multidisciplinary teams, alongside civil servants, rather than in isolation?

• Can they flex as the project evolves, without charging for every deviation?

On one programme, I sat through bid presentations where one supplier promised to deliver the entire alpha in record time. It looked efficient on paper, but their approach cut out user research entirely. Another supplier was more expensive, but they showed a clear plan for co-designing with real users, iterating prototypes, and testing assumptions.

We chose the latter. And it paid off. Not only did they deliver a usable service, but they also helped the internal team build their own capability. By the time we moved to beta, our civil service colleagues were confident running user testing sessions themselves. The “more expensive” supplier had actually reduced long-term dependency and delivered better value overall.

This is where procurement needs a long-term lens. The right partner is not just the one who can ship a deliverable quickly, but the one who leaves the organisation stronger and the service sustainable.

Designing procurement as part of the service

Procurement isn’t just a transaction; it’s part of the service design. The way you write requirements, structure contracts, and onboard suppliers sends a strong signal about how you expect to work.

If you procure for a black-box deliverable, you’ll get a black-box partner. If you procure for collaboration, openness, and iteration, you’ll get a partner who’s ready to work that way.

I once worked on a programme where the initial contract had been written in very rigid, output-driven terms: the supplier was paid on delivery of a specific set of features. It looked neat on paper but created tension in practice. Every time we learned something new from users, and needed to pivot, the supplier pushed back: “That’s out of scope.” It slowed delivery and frustrated both teams.

When we re-tendered for the next phase, we rewrote the contract around outcomes instead of outputs. We asked suppliers to show how they would work in an agile, iterative way, and we explicitly built flexibility into the payment milestones. The difference was night and day. The new supplier embraced discovery, tested assumptions, and even suggested cost-saving improvements we hadn’t spotted. Procurement had become part of the design, not an obstacle to it.

Making procurement human

Behind every procurement are people — civil servants trying to do the right thing, suppliers trying to prove their worth, and users who will live with the outcome. It’s easy to lose sight of that in the process-heavy world of frameworks and evaluation scores.

I’ve found that the most successful procurements are the ones that feel human. That means creating space for genuine dialogue with suppliers, not just written responses. It means being transparent about constraints, so suppliers don’t waste time chasing unrealistic scope. And it means remembering that procurement is the start of a relationship, not the end of a transaction.

On one project, we ran a supplier day where potential bidders could meet the delivery team, hear about the challenges first-hand, and ask questions openly. This wasn’t about giving unfair advantage; it was about levelling the playing field. The result was sharper, more realistic bids — and suppliers who already understood the culture we wanted to build.

That supplier day did more than improve the paperwork. It created a sense of shared purpose. The supplier we eventually chose told us later that the openness of that session was one of the reasons they bid. They knew we valued honesty over polished sales pitches, and that made them want to bring their best people, not just their best proposal.

Case Study: Procurement that enabled transformation

To ground this further, let me share a fuller example.

I was part of a programme in a large central government department that needed to replace an ageing case management system. The stakes were high: the existing system was clunky, slow, and painful for both staff and citizens. Leadership wanted a “digital-first” replacement and were keen to move quickly.

The first draft procurement read like a classic IT tender: a list of required features, a timeline, and a preference for suppliers with experience in big enterprise platforms. But when we spoke to caseworkers, we discovered that their biggest frustration wasn’t the lack of features — it was that the system forced them into rigid processes that didn’t match the reality of their work.

We worked with procurement colleagues to reframe the tender around outcomes. Instead of specifying features, we asked suppliers to show how they would co-design with staff, test prototypes, and improve case handling efficiency. We also weighted “ways of working” and “understanding of user needs” as heavily as technical capability in the evaluation.

The supplier we selected wasn’t the cheapest, nor the one with the most impressive technology stack. But they demonstrated — in their bid and in their presentations — that they understood service design. They brought caseworkers into workshops from day one, iterated prototypes weekly, and showed flexibility when policy changes shifted the scope.

Eighteen months later, the new system was live. Case handling times were down by 40%, user satisfaction was up, and — perhaps most importantly — the department now had its own in-house capability to maintain and improve the service. Procurement had set the tone for all of that. By choosing the right partner in the right way, we’d created the conditions for real transformation.

Final thoughts

Procurement, done right, sets the foundation for successful digital delivery. It’s not about writing the perfect tender or finding the cheapest supplier. It’s about aligning partners around clear outcomes, balancing cost with long-term fit, designing procurement as part of the service, and remembering that at its heart, this is a human relationship.

As practitioners, we play a vital role in shaping this. Whether as business analysts translating needs into requirements, or service designers framing procurement as part of the wider user journey, we can help leaders secure partners who will make transformation stick.

So here’s the question I’d leave you with: when you next procure for a digital partner, are you setting up a contract — or are you designing the foundation of the service itself?