GDS recruiting for people to lead new Global Digital Marketplace

The Government Digital Service is recruiting for new roles to head up the delivery of the much anticipated Global Digital Marketplace, an extension of the innovative procurement platform that has diversified the supplier base for British government and opened up the market to SMEs.

Services on the Digital Marketplace - which includes the G-Cloud and Digital Specialists and Outcomes framework - have previously been limited to public sector organisations in the UK. In March last year, GDS announced that it was looking to make the Marketplace an international endeavour.

The Digital Marketplace has helped to transform and simplify the selling of cloud and digital services to UK government buyers. It intends to provide a transparent, searchable platform, with the aim of democratising procurement in government, which has traditionally been dominated by a handful of large SIs.

Although problems with the platform still exist, billions has now been spent through the Marketplace and SMEs have been given a better chance of selling their services to government.

Because of this, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office decided to give GDS funding to expand the platform, as part of their work on anti-corruption.

At the time, GDS said:

“We’re working on a project called Global Digital Marketplace. As the name suggests, it’s an expansion of the Digital Marketplace that will be open to international governments. And it means UK suppliers will have access to the global market.

“Global Digital Marketplace is a partnership between GDS and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It aims to help international governments make their procurement more transparent, in order to prevent corruption and to boost their digital, data and technology sectors.

“We announced the project at an event last September, where we looked at how Global Digital Marketplace could support emerging economies to deliver better public services and reform their digital and technology procurement.”

A recruitment drive

Off the back of this announcement, this week we noticed that GDS has put out to job adverts to support the delivery of the new Global Digital Marketplace - seeking a Head of Delivery and three Product Managers.

The Head of Delivery role will report to the Head of Global Digital Marketplace and will be accountable for the strategic planning and end-to-end agile delivery of the “programme vision and roadmap, leading the programme through all phases of an ongoing development lifecycle”.

The chosen candidate will lead the team on a day-to-day basis, including team management, international engagement activities, governance and reporting, and finance and recruitment.

Meanwhile the Product Manager roles will focus on bringing the best practice of GDS and UK government, in terms of user centred design, data led and open approaches, and work with partner government to “help transform their contracting and procurement processes”.

Each role will be focused on one region and there will be a Product Manager for:

• Latin America (Mexico, Columbia)
• Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia)
• Southern Africa (South Africa, and potentially other countries in the Southern African Development Community)

The Head of Delivery role commands a salary of up to £70,877 and interviews are being held from 25th March. While the Product Manager roles are being advertised with a salary of up to £60,635, with interviews being held on the same date.