Martyn Hart, chair of the National Outsourcing Association, writes for the Guardian and says that better relationships and benchmarking can make government a smarter buyer of IT services.

Martyn comments :"Two documents emanating from Whitehall within days of each other last month – the Open Public Services white paper, and the Cabinet Office Guidance for Offshoring - point to an escalating level of outsourcing in government support services.

Last week, another document – the provocatively entitled Government IT – A Recipe for Rip Offs, was scathing in its opinions on how government lacks the requisite expertise to handle such deals, alleging that it is paying massively over-the-odds for IT services.

Sandwiched in between these documents was a report from the National Audit Office that told us, despite spending roughly £275m on training in 2009-10, the government had no accurate data on the timings, costs and benefits (if any) of its skills development programme. If government manages its IT outsourcing deals in the same equivocal fashion, it is no surprise that there has been a repugnantly thoughtless waste of exasperated taxpayers' cash."