Decoding Public Procurement with the Startup Coalition

Originally co-authored with Edd Elliott and the Startup Coalition. First published by Startup Coalition on 7 September 2026. Republished here with permission. Read the original.

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Public sector procurement can be confusing for those encountering it for the first time. As well as lots of platforms and rules & regulations, there are also new terms you may not have encountered in other settings.

In this article, Startup Coalition partnered with Chris Maitland, CEO & Founder of Jonty, an AI bid manager that helps businesses find, qualify for and win UK public sector contracts, to help decode some of the most common terms you might come across and what you need to know.

One point to flag up front. The Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025 and renamed or updated some of the terms below. Contracts, frameworks and purchasing systems set up before that date are still running under the old rules, so for the next few years you will meet both sets of language. We have noted where that applies.

1. Frameworks

A framework is a list of suppliers that have been pre-approved by the government as able to deliver a certain set of services. They are used by public bodies to streamline purchasing. Procurement can be slow and complicated for buyers as well as startups. Pre-approving lists of suppliers helps them speed up the process.

Frameworks can range in size and remit. Some are open to as many suppliers as want to apply, while others are limited to a certain number of companies. They also differ in how they allow buyers to use them, with some frameworks allowing more 'direct' purchasing (i.e. without a competition) than others.

As a startup, the most common frameworks you will interact with are G-Cloud, for cloud software and hosting, and Digital Outcomes and Specialists, for agile delivery teams and individual specialists. Both are run by the Government Commercial Agency, which was known as Crown Commercial Service until April 2026. However, you may find there are specialist frameworks for your solution type or sector that may be useful for you. For example, the NHS has a number of specialist frameworks for healthcare products and services.

Almost all frameworks require an application to join, which involves submitting information about your company and solution. Most frameworks have preset dates where they will accept applications, known as 'application windows'. These are worth tracking. Although the government is looking to make application periods more frequent, some frameworks can still have 2-3 year waits between windows.

2. Dynamic Purchasing Systems

A Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) is a list of pre-approved suppliers, similar to a framework, with one important difference: it stays open all the time, so you can apply to join at any point in the DPS' life-cycle, rather than waiting for a fixed application window.

Under the old rules, a DPS could only be used for commonly bought, off-the-shelf goods and services. This is now changing. The Procurement Act replaced DPSs and utilities qualification systems with a single tool called a 'dynamic market'. These dynamic markets work in much the same way as DPSs: they must stay open to new joiners throughout their life. However, they can now be used for any type of purchase rather than just off-the-shelf ones.

Like frameworks, DPSs and dynamic markets require an application to join. Buyers can set conditions for membership, but those conditions should be proportionate and cannot be changed part way through.

Existing DPSs keep running for now. They expire automatically on 23 February 2029 unless ended sooner. For startups, the most common DPS you may interact with is Spark, the public sector innovation marketplace.

Quick Tip: Because dynamic markets and DPSs stay permanently open, they can be a low effort route to market for a new market entrant. It's worth checking whether one exists in your category before you chase a framework whose window has closed.

3. Preliminary Market Engagement

Public sector buyers are meant to signal what they intend to buy in advance of publishing a tender. This signalling is often described as 'preliminary market engagement' (PME).

Depending on what type of startup you are, PME can be one of the most valuable, and often overlooked, parts of the sales process. If you are operating in a market with lots of pre-existing tender activity (social care provision, for example) PME gives you early sight of what commercial opportunities may arise in future, so you know what buyers to engage when.

PME is particularly important if your solution takes a different form to your competitors, for example if your competitors provide a service and you provide a product. Once a tender is issued, the buyer is not allowed to change it. If your buyer has described the solution they are looking for in the shape and size of your competitor, sadly you can be at a significant disadvantage. Keeping track of PME and engaging buyers before this point helps avoid this problem.

There are three types of PME notices that are worth watching for.

1. Pipeline notices are annual look-aheads. Any contracting authority expecting to pay out more than £100m in the coming financial year has to publish one, itemising each contract over £2m it intends to tender in the next 18 months, by 26 May each year. A pipeline notice is not something you can bid for. It is a planning document that tells you who is buying what in your category, and roughly when.

2. Planned procurement notices are optional signals that a buyer intends to publish a tender at a future date. Publishing one can allow the buyer to shorten the tendering timetable later, so it is usually a sign that a procurement is real and moving rather than aspirational.

3. Preliminary market engagement notices are published when a buyer actually engages the market, whether that is a supplier day, a webinar, an RFI or a written questionnaire. If a buyer runs market engagement without publishing one, they have to explain why in the tender notice. This is your invitation to talk to the buyer while the requirement is still being shaped.

If you have been around procurement for a while, you may recognise most of this as 'Prior Information Notices', or PINs. This was what preliminary engagement was called before February 2025, and was a more limited form of engagement with suppliers.

Quick Tip: Buyers publish these notices precisely because they want to hear from the market and engage with suppliers. Turning up to events or asking for a call at this stage of a process isn't breaking the rules, so take advantage of it as much as you can.

4. ITTs

ITT stands for 'Invitation to Tender'. It refers to the documents a public sector buyer will issue when they are starting a procurement process. These documents often contain the specifications for the tender (i.e. what they want you to deliver), the requirements (i.e. what you have to comply with), the evaluation criteria, contract terms, pricing requirements and submission instructions.

You can keep track of ITTs through the government's Find a Tender website or through third party services like Jonty. Since February 2025, Find a Tender has doubled as the government's 'Central Digital Platform', which is where all regulated notices are published.

To access an ITT and submit a response, you will often be asked to set up an account with a separate procurement portal for that government buyer. For example, if you are responding to an ITT from a local council, you might be directed to a portal run by one of Proactis, In-tend or Jaggaer to access the actual documents.

Quick Tip: It is a good idea to register on the Central Digital Platform (Find a Tender) in advance of submitting your first tender. Buyers cannot award a contract to a supplier who is not registered on the Platform. Doing it in advance will save potential complications down the line.

5. Clarification Questions and Deadlines

Government buyers are meant to provide the same information to all potential suppliers to keep the process fair. Inevitably, however, upon reading ITTs, suppliers have questions they need to have answered before submitting a response. Buyers get around this problem by using a system called 'Clarification Questions'.

In practical terms, clarification questions are queries any supplier can submit about the ITT that the buyer must respond to. These questions and their responses are then made public to all potential suppliers and are added to the ITT documents.

Most tender processes will set a deadline for clarification questions. This is commonly halfway through the submission period (e.g. if you have four weeks to respond from the ITT being published, the deadline for clarification questions is usually at the end of the second week). Once the clarification deadline has elapsed, buyers are not obliged to respond to any questions.

Quick Tip: It's always worth reading what clarification questions have been submitted and the responses, even if you haven't submitted one yourself. Seeing what other suppliers have asked can give you a sense of how they intend to approach their submission, or highlight an aspect of the requirements that maybe you missed.

6. Lots

For larger procurements or frameworks, government sometimes splits up the contract into different sections based on different types of service, or sometimes by geography or contract size. These different sections are referred to as 'Lots'.

The ITT will often be clear as to what the different Lots refer to, and in the majority of cases you can apply to as many or as few Lots as you think are relevant to you.

7. Selection Questionnaires

For some procurement processes, the buyer may want to understand certain details about potential suppliers before publishing an ITT. To do this, they issue a 'Selection Questionnaire', usually made up of a series of qualifying questions that can range from enquiries about service details to previous case studies. In some cases, public sector buyers use selection questionnaires to downselect to a smaller number of eligible suppliers before issuing an ITT, so it is always worth answering them fully and comprehensively.

Quick Tip: Keep your Central Digital Platform profile up to date. Sometimes you will be asked to share a code from your profile with buyers as part of Selection Questionnaires, so they can see your basic company details.

8. Cyber Essentials Certification

Cyber Essentials is a UK government backed cyber security certification. It covers five basic technical controls: firewalls, secure configuration, user access control, malware protection and security update management. Holding 'standard' Cyber Essentials, a verified self-assessment of these controls, is a common requirement for most public sector tender processes. Some contracts may also ask for Cyber Essentials Plus, a higher certification that covers the same controls and adds independent technical testing. (ISO 27001 is a further certification you may encounter for larger technology contracts. It is an international standard for information security.)

Quick Tip: Getting Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus certified can take weeks rather than days and it requires renewing annually. It is worth planning in advance, so you aren't caught out at the last moment. IASME runs the scheme on behalf of the relevant authority (National Cyber Security Centre, NCSC) and has a free readiness tool.

9. DPIA

DPIA stands for Data Protection Impact Assessment. They are required under UK GDPR where processing personal data is likely to result in a high risk to individuals. You will likely encounter them if you are engaging in large scale data processing, special category data such as health records, or the use of particularly cutting edge technology.

The buyer, as the data controller, owns the DPIA. However, as their supplier and a processor of data, they are required to ask you for the information they need to complete the assessment, including: what data you process, where it is hosted, who your sub-processors are, how long you retain it, how it is secured, and what happens to it when the contract ends. If your product uses AI, expect extra scrutiny on training data, model providers, and whether customer data is used to improve your model.

Quick Tip: Prepare a standard pack covering a data flow description, hosting locations, a sub-processor list, retention periods and your security certifications. You can then easily reuse it across almost all DPIAs.

10. Social Value

Government procures roughly £440bn on goods and services a year. That's a huge amount of money, and how government spends this has an impact on the economy. Because of this, successive administrations have aimed to use this spending power to drive wider societal outcomes. This is commonly referred to as 'social value' in public procurement.

Social value has been applied in different ways by different governments and administrations. Traditionally in the UK it has encompassed the wider economic, social and environmental benefits a contract might deliver such as: local jobs, apprenticeships, skills, carbon reduction, support for small and voluntary sector suppliers. More recently, the Burnham government has refined this list to focus solely on jobs and skills opportunities, with these changes to be implemented in the new year. (See Startup Coalition's deep dive on these reforms here.)

How will you interact with social value as a supplier? Many contracts now (and only those above £1m from 1 January 2027) will feature a 'social value question'. These often take a common format and will ask you to make a series of commitments as to how you will deliver the contract in order to meet a particular social value outcome.

The most common mistake in answering these questions is submitting corporate policy. Buyers are looking for specific, measurable, time-bound commitments tied to the contract, and those commitments usually end up written into the contract as KPIs you have to report against.

Quick Tip: Build two or three social value commitments you can actually deliver at your size, with numbers and dates attached, and reuse them. Promising things you cannot deliver creates a contract management problem later.

11. Award Criteria

Award criteria are the factors a buyer will use to score your submission. They are usually divided into sections, such as quality (which is often subdivided into individual questions like technical approach, mobilisation, etc.), price and social value, with a weighting or percentage given to each section.

Quick Tip: Read the award criteria, submission questions and their weightings before you read the specification and structure your response. It will help guide you as to what to prepare and what areas of the specification to pay particular attention to.