Methodology

The suppliers, products and customers discussed in the survey are in the landscape database, with known spend and sources. The graph shows how they connect.

How the sector chapters are constructed, what the badges mean, and what the report does and does not claim.

Tone and editorial standards

The survey reports facts and analysis. It does not take a position against suppliers in general or a political position. Where a commercial system works well and is good value, the survey says so. The CIC’s aim is for public bodies to control the software they depend on; many existing suppliers would remain in place under that aim.

The survey assesses systems mainly from the point of view of the staff who use them day to day, alongside cost and procurement. Where evidence on workflow, agency, or morale exists (staff surveys, professional body reports, journalistic accounts, NAO findings), it is reported. Where it does not, that is stated.

The text uses plain English, with lists for enumerations and prose elsewhere.

Confidence ratings

Every substantive factual claim (spend figure, market share, vendor identity, contract value) is tagged with a confidence rating. Ratings appear inline next to the figure.

• High Sourced from a primary source: government publication, supplier disclosure under regulatory obligation, audited accounts, parliamentary answers, FOI responses, NAO reports. Multiple corroborating sources where possible.
• Medium Sourced from secondary reporting (journalistic, industry analyst, trade press) or a single primary source without corroboration. Reasonably reliable but not authoritative.
• Low Inferred or sourced from a single non-primary source. Used only where higher-confidence evidence is unavailable and the figure is necessary for the assessment.
• Est Calculated by the survey from underlying data. Methodology stated alongside.

Where evidence is weak (notably: social care, fire and rescue, fragmented local-government spend), the survey reports what is sourceable, identifies the gap explicitly, and gives a low-confidence range or estimate only where it is materially useful. Figures are not given to more precision than the source supports.

The three-axis ownership model

Ownership, source model, and architecture are often conflated. The survey separates them. A system can be publicly-owned but proprietary; it can be open source but vendor-operated; it can be web-based but only viable on specialised infrastructure. Each system is described against all three axes.

Replaceability grading

Every system covered is graded for replaceability with a publicly-owned, open-source alternative. Each grade is given with a justification specific to that system.

• A Strong candidate. Mature open alternatives exist or are tractable to build. Data formats open or reverse-engineerable. Regulatory burden modest. Switching cost manageable. Worth pursuing.
• B Plausible candidate. Open alternatives exist but are immature; regulatory complexity (clinical safety, accreditation, certification) raises the bar significantly. Viable with focused investment.
• C Difficult. Specialised, safety-critical, deeply integrated with vendor estate, or operating under heavy regulation. Replacement possible in principle but very expensive in practice. Keeping the current system may be the better option.
• D Out of scope. Replacement is not the relevant question. Sovereignty concerns may still apply but are addressed through other means: procurement terms, escrow, audit rights, data-residency requirements.

The four sovereignty dimensions

For each system, four dimensions are assessed independently. A system can score well on some dimensions and badly on others.

• Data sovereignty. Who controls the data, where it resides, who can access it, on what terms.
• Code sovereignty. Who controls the source. Can it be inspected, modified, forked.
• Operational sovereignty. Who runs the system. Who can take it down. What happens if the supplier exits or is acquired.
• Adaptation sovereignty. Who decides what the system does next. Can the institution that uses it shape it.

The human dimension

In addition to cost and sovereignty, every sector chapter addresses how the current systems sit with the people who use them.

• Workflow fit. How well the system matches how staff actually work. Where it impedes them.
• Staff agency. Whether staff can influence the system’s evolution. Whether their requests are heard.
• Morale and burnout. The documented human cost of the current system, where attributable.
• Skills lock-in. Whether the system creates personal-skill dependencies that constrain career mobility for the staff trained in it.

Evidence on the human dimension is harder to source than spend data. Where it exists (the NHS Staff Survey, professional body reports, individual case studies, NAO usability findings), it is reported.

The eight horizontal layers

Eight functional categories recur across sectors. They are the strongest candidates for shared public-sector platforms because they cross sector boundaries and are not domain-specific. The cross-cutting analysis returns to them after the sector chapters.

1. Identity. Citizen and staff authentication, federation, credential management.
2. Case management. The generic “track an item through stages with attachments and decisions” pattern.
3. Scheduling and resource allocation. Appointments, dispatch, rotas, capacity.
4. Document and records management. Storage, retention, retrieval, redaction.
5. Payments and financial transactions. Inbound, outbound, ledger, reconciliation.
6. Communications. Citizen-facing (messaging, notifications) and staff-facing (collaboration, comms).
7. Geospatial and asset management. What is where, who owns it, what condition it is in.
8. Reporting and analytics. Operational dashboards, statutory returns, BI.

What the survey does not claim

The survey is a broad overview of where the realistic opportunities are, written for the CIC team. It is not used to select projects; the CIC’s first engagements will be smaller and more contained than anything described here.

It also does not claim that publicly-owned, open-source replacement is always the best option. Several sectors include explicit hands-off cases. The purpose is to identify which problems the CIC can realistically address.

Out of scope

• Defence weapons platforms and operational military systems.
• Signals intelligence and classified national security systems.
• Air traffic control and other safety-of-life real-time systems where regulatory regimes preclude alternative architectures.
• Private-sector digital systems, except where directly comparable for context.

Each sector chapter lists its out-of-scope categories, with reasons.