3.14 Since 2013 there has been an increased focus on government's wider commercial capability and the role of the pan-government commercial function. The Cabinet Office has conducted commercial capability reviews of each department, published new quality standards and runs a new commercial skills assessment centre. Departments, including CCS, are producing plans for how their part of the commercial function will operate. In general, departments are bringing in more senior commercial leaders, investing in systems and reforming their governance of contracts. Overall, they plan to increase their senior commercial staff and reduce their junior staff. The aim is to give the commercial teams a more strategic role and to better equip them to negotiate with government's commercial providers.
3.15 The Cabinet Office draft plans for the government's commercial function and the CCS review have been produced in isolation. In principle, CCS should be able to satisfy a key need of the changes to the government commercial service. In particular, it can release some of the burden from government departments for buying and managing simpler and non-strategic contracts. However to date, CCS has focused on improving the services it carries out today. CCS has yet to work with individual departments to determine whether it could carry out more activities, which are still within the scope of its new standard service. This would allow a full assessment of which buying activities should be carried out by the various parts of government.