Influencing technology markets

A Centre of Excellence is not only a compendium of current good practice. It should exist in part to influence the wider systems within the sector so that positive changes can happen. This is nowhere more true than in the technology market.

The Department for Education³³, the Department for Health and Social Care³⁴, and the Ministry for Housing, Communities, and Local Government³⁵ are all engaged in significant research and design projects to make sense of technology markets and standards relevant to our sector. Many of our colleagues in local authorities are contributing to these work programmes and others besides. Recently, with the help of more than half³⁶ of English statutory safeguarding authorities, we established NVEST, the National Voice for Excellence in Safeguarding Technology³⁷, to bring local authorities together and make intelligible, aligned contributions to these discussions.

A Centre of Excellence should play a leading role in continuing that work. It should work actively and deliberately to change the world so that local authorities are better able to get the technology they need. This work will develop as its participants learn more about the goals they want to pursue and the methods to achieve them, but it will probably include engaging directly with suppliers, convening local authorities – and functions within local authorities – to specify and agree strategies for change, and liaising with central government to help design policy instruments which result in an improved technology market without destabilising those elements which local authorities currently rely on.

Building on discussion above about challenging existing market dynamics, and discussion below about reimagining cross-organisation collaboration towards community-focused delivery, a Centre of Excellence could play a joint role of helping the market deliver value as it is, while also inventing or identifying new approaches to meeting the sector’s technology needs for the long term.

Local authorities currently act on technology markets as individual customers. By acting as a cross-sector community, we can take different actions and pursue a broader range of possible solutions.

Focus areas for the Centre of Excellence:

• Convening local authorities to reach actionable consensus on market issues

• Liaising with central government to scope useful policy instruments

• Engaging with suppliers to maintain dialogue on mutually beneficial market behaviours

³³ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/childrens-social-care-data-and-digital-strategy/childrens-social-care-data-and-digital-strategy

³⁴ https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/008322-2025

³⁵ https://www.localdigital.gov.uk/data-standards/

³⁶ https://www.datatoinsight.org/post/nvest-newsletter-june-2025

³⁷ https://www.datatoinsight.org/nvest

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