5 This report looks at what government is doing to make the public sector marketplace more accessible to SMEs. It focuses particularly on the action government took to achieve its aspiration of 25% by 2015 and early plans to achieve the 2020 target. The report sets out:
• central government's progress in increasing the government's use of SMEs;
• efforts to remove the barriers that SMEs face when bidding for government contracts; and
• the challenges for government of realising the benefits of using SMEs.
6 We did not audit the value for money offered by SMEs compared with other providers for individual contracts. Appendix One explains our methodology.