Some survey participants take the view that the shift from a relational to a highly contractual market is irreversible, that there is no way of overcoming the loss of trust which has emerged over the past five or six years.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Contracts are contracts now. There has been a one-off reset - contracts are more transactional and will be treated much more seriously now.
Others take the view that markets have cycles, and that the pendulum will eventually swing back to a more relational and trust-based model. This might be true, but the evidence from history and from international markets is that the cycles might be very long. In the ICT sector, there is a view that government will eventually have to embrace the digital revolution, and that it is only a matter of time before it engages in a more mature way with the industry.
The alternative view is that the market for complex services is unsustainable if questions of trust are not addressed and more appropriate contractual models are not employed. This was the most widely-held view among survey participants, and it is the approach adopted in this report.