This new way of working has been driven in part by a convergence of public and private sector requirements, both in terms of technology expectations and cyber threat. To help drive the required innovation, government departments now engage directly with SME’s through agile sprint processes, supported by lighter-weight contracting vehicles, leveraging the agility of SMEs and their desire to align innovation with emerging customer requirements.
While agile SME suppliers have flexibility to tailor solutions closely to public sector customer requirements, government’s relatively recent desire to avoid bespoke systems, combined with market convergence, allows the same R&D costs to meet the needs of broader markets. For example, here at Becrypt we have worked with the National Cyber Security Centre and other government departments to develop a ‘Cloud Client’ End User Device platform for accessing cloud and online services, leveraging open source components to develop a secure Linux-based operating system for access to cloud services. As a ‘born-in-government’ product, we have then been able to deploy the same technology across other security conscious organizations, such as those within the Critical National Infrastructure.