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GDS' new blog lays out their plans for the Digital Marketplace going forward, notably a refresh of the Digital Services Framework.

In a blog published recently, Tony Singleton, Director of the Digital Commercial Programme at the Government Digital Service (GDS), provided an update on the progress that he and his team have made with the Digital Marketplace.

The update gave some further information on the G-Cloud 5 extension, and when we can expect to see the next iteration of the framework, G-Cloud 7, go live. However, most of the update was dedicated to the Digital Services Framework (DSF), which has attracted some degree of criticism from industry over the last few months.

Tony explains in his blog that they have made stopgap changes to DSF for the time being, and are preparing to substantially transform the framework for its next iteration.

The update clarifies how the new DSF will take into account the feedback the GDS team has received from suppliers. A couple of months ago, techUK organised a high-level roundtable with the very purpose of giving suppliers a chance provide GDS with their thoughts on improving DSF. We are pleased to see that some of the suggestions raised at the roundtable have been taken on board by Tony and his team, and techUK and its members stand ready to provide constructive feedback on any new developments.

Finally, the GDS team shared a provisional timeline for DSF going forward – notably that they expect to publish the OJEU for the redesigned framework in August and hope to have it live by January 2016. We look forward to working with GDS and the Crown Commercial Service to help them engage with the market on the redesign of the framework, and ensure that views from across the industry are heard.

Overall, it is great to see so many new ideas and developments and it certainly gives us a lot to talk about at our Digital Marketplace Meet-up next month. To add to this, we will shortly be announcing some further market engagement events around G-Cloud 7 and more, covering many of the items raised by Tony in his update – so do watch this space!