Procurement, not innovation, decides what technology you actually get

This is fictional sample content, created to demonstrate the layout. The places, people and figures in it are invented. It is not reporting.

Public bodies do not choose software the way people imagine. They choose a framework, then a supplier on that framework, then a product that supplier resells.

By the time a product reaches a shortlist it has already passed through filters that have nothing to do with whether it is any good: turnover thresholds, insurance levels, reference customers of a certain size.

This is not corruption. Each filter exists because something once went wrong. Together they produce a market in which the incumbent is structurally advantaged.

If you want different technology in public services, the lever is the framework, not the demo.