Building a deep knowledge of Digital Spend Control was one of the best decisions I made as a digital leader in the Civil Service. I’m Scott Colfer, and in this post I’ll share how it can help you, and offer a chance to meetup and learn more, for free.

Deep knowledge of Digital Spend Control

As a Head of Product in a large Government Dept, I wanted to:

• Make the Service Standard work for us, not the other way round
• Ensure we were focused on the outcomes of our work, creating measurable benefits for our users and our organisation
• Improve the performance of teams by improving how professions work together.

Piecing together ‘the GDS model’

I led my Department’s contribution to the revised Service Standard and supported GDS to figure out assessment against it. As a result of this I was asked to become the Departmental Assurance Lead for Service Standard. Over the following years, I learned a huge amount about using Digital Spend Control, Technology Code of Practice, Service Standard, and the Service Manual to their fullest. 

Making the model work for you

I learned how their intent is great but the detail often needs improving to fit a specific context. I learned that building a close relationship with the Cabinet Office and GDS builds trust that makes space for flexibility and common sense. Working closely with Portfolio, we built a single overview of the 50-60+ products across our Digital and Technology landscape and made clever use of Digital Pipeline to improve accountability whilst reducing massive amounts of bureaucracy.

Helping others understand how the model can work for them

I also learned that this type of knowledge is hard to find. The bare bones of ‘the GDS model’ are there, but the lessons of using it to its full potential aren’t neatly packaged anywhere. I used to share this knowledge internally, then started being asked to share with other Departments, other sectors, and other countries looking to adopt this model. Having done this informally for a few years, we’re pulling it together as a proper training course to make it as widely accessible as possible.

Performance Review of Digital Spend

A Performance Review of Digital Spend was released by HM Treasury, DSIT, and GDS in March 2025. The recommendations (which look likely to proceed) include outcome-based funding, stage funding, and reducing technical debt. Alongside approaches to testing and introducing new technologies. 

A great opportunity for you

This is a great opportunity for digital leaders and their organisations to improve Digital Spend, the first opportunity of its kind since Digital Spend Control was officially implemented in 2018. I recognise the problems identified, and the recommendations are sensible. And what struck me was that we’d previously implemented a version of many of these recommendations in my prior role. And that existing Digital Spend Control already leaves space for many of these recommendations if it had only been better understood.

Practical guidance for you

We will share a series of blog posts with practical recommendations on how to implement some of these recommendations in your own organisation, based on practical experiences. Follow us on LinkedIn or signup to our mailing list to get notified when these posts are published.

Want to know more? Sign up for a taster.

We will be running free, 1-hour, lunchtime taster sessions over lunchtime via Microsoft Teams over the coming months. Our first is 24th April, 12:30pm – 1:30pm, and you can sign up here and express your interest in future tasters here. We also offer paid-for, full-day training on Digital Spend, you can express your interest here.

In this taster session well cover:

• What is ‘the GDS model’? How does Spend Control, the Technology Code of Practice, the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework, the Service Standard, and the Service Manual fit together?
• How do you make Digital Spend work for you (not the other way around)? If you’re clear on the intent behind it, how do you improve it for your context without ever ‘lowering the bar’?
• How does this work for large programmes, policy development, and enterprise technology? Hard won lessons on making this work outside ‘pure’ digital conditions.

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🖊️ Authored by: Scott Colfer

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