An investigation carried out by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has revealed that the public sector still has barriers to entry, with incumbent suppliers having “an inherent advantage” over new bidders.

The OFT report said that IT procurement in the public sector was still plagued by issues of transparency and over complexity in contract arrangements.

The report said that suppliers often had greater information than public sector buyers who failed to: “routinely collect procurement data or make full use of market intelligence”.

The report concluded that public sector buyers need to be more aware of product and service data and that this information needs to be shared across the public departments.