The government is preparing to launch a national procurement strategy for IT after the strategy was successfully trialled across London.

The new IT procurement strategy is designed to drive increased transparency, improved pricing models and increased cross department data sharing in order to increase negotiating power.

Director of commercial, contracts and procurement at the London Borough of Harrow, Terry Brewer, commented that: “We’re imminently about to launch an ICT category strategy so that we can issue that to procurement professionals and CIOs up and down the country as a guide.”

He added: “We’re hoping to have a common procurement platform where the aim is to have commodity unit costs, so if you work in a local authority you know how much you are going to be paying and how much your colleagues are paying.”

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