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Use a reuse-first, lifecycle-cost decision. First check whether another public body already operates a suitable shared service, platform, component, or open-source project. If reuse cannot meet the mission, compare commercial and open-source products and configure them before commissioning bespoke code. Build only when the need is genuinely unique, available products cannot satisfy essential scale, integration, security, or legal requirements, and the organisation can fund and operate the technology for its full life. A hybrid approach—reusing a common platform, buying a specialist module, and building a small unique component—is often the most defensible outcome.
The right answer is not determined by the lowest quotation. Compare user fit, delivery time, security, interoperability, skills, switching effort, and every cost from discovery through retirement. A project-specific should-cost model and sensitivity analysis are essential because no universal government statistic proves that build, buy, or reuse is always cheapest.
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What should a government software decision prove?
A purchasing strategy should connect the user problem to a transparent build, buy, or reuse decision. UK Government Digital Service guidance says the strategy must show the user need or problem, the decision process, and contractual limitations. Record the outcomes the service must achieve, measurable service levels, data sensitivity, legal constraints, integration needs, expected volume, and what will happen when the service is replaced.
Assign a product owner who remains accountable after delivery. The owner should be able to explain why the selected route is proportionate, how risks are allocated to the party best able to manage them, and how the organisation will avoid accumulating another unmaintainable legacy system.
#1 Best Overall
- User and mission need: Identify who uses the service, the job they need to complete, accessibility obligations, and the consequence of failure.
- Non-negotiable constraints: Document statutory rules, records retention, data residency, classification, privacy, security controls, performance, resilience, and interoperability requirements.
- Outcome measures: Set measurable targets such as processing time, availability, error rate, case throughput, cost per transaction, or reduction in manual work.
- Lifecycle assumptions: Estimate the service life, refresh points, likely policy changes, and retirement or replacement triggers.
- Commercial boundaries: State procurement route, budget limits, framework restrictions, contract duration, and obligations to share or publish code and data.
Should we reuse another department’s software first?
Yes, but treat reuse as a due-diligence exercise rather than a free shortcut. NHS England guidance says digital services should demonstrate that they sought to reuse existing solutions before delivering new ones. Reuse can reduce duplicated development, shorten time to value, improve sustainability, and reduce carbon, yet integration, remediation, support, and ownership still have to be funded.
Find credible candidates
Search internal service catalogues, architecture repositories, cross-government communities, shared platforms, and public code repositories. Ask candidate owners for current documentation, a live demonstration, dependency lists, security assessments, accessibility evidence, operating costs, incident history, release cadence, and a roadmap. A project that is technically reusable but undocumented may cost more than a supported product.
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Check fit in the target context
Validate the candidate against the target organisation’s architecture, identity model, data structures, hosting pattern, security posture, service levels, accessibility needs, and operational processes. Test a realistic workflow with representative data; a superficial feature match can conceal expensive changes to permissions, reporting, records management, or integrations.
Confirm a durable owner
Reuse creates a dependency on the team that owns the shared service. Establish who funds maintenance, approves changes, handles incidents, supplies security patches, supports users, and decides when the service is retired. Agree service-level measures and escalation paths before committing. If the original owner could withdraw support without notice, include a migration plan and budget.
Price adaptation, not just adoption
Include data cleansing, interface changes, migration, testing, training, accessibility remediation, deployment, and ongoing contributions to the shared service. Reusing code does not remove the cost of making it safe and operable in a new environment.
When is buying commercial or open-source software better?
Buying is usually appropriate when a product meets most needs, can be configured without damaging its upgrade path, and has commercially available expertise and support. Compare commercial and open-source products on the same lifecycle basis; an open licence changes the cost profile but does not eliminate implementation, operations, security, or exit work.
Signals that an off-the-shelf product fits
- The process is common across many organisations and does not confer a unique mission advantage.
- The product already supports required security, accessibility, audit, reporting, and integration standards.
- Configuration can meet policy variations without maintaining a private code branch.
- There is a healthy market of implementers, support providers, and replacement products.
- The supplier or community demonstrates a credible release, vulnerability response, and end-of-life policy.
Challenge every custom requirement
For each requested divergence, ask whether it is legally essential, required for a measurable mission outcome, or simply a preference inherited from an old process. If the process can adapt to a proven product without harming users or compliance, configuration generally preserves upgradeability better than custom code. Record accepted compromises and the evidence behind them.
Compare products with a weighted scorecard
Agree weights before demonstrations so a persuasive sales presentation cannot override critical requirements. A typical scorecard might give user and mission fit 25%, security and privacy 20%, interoperability and data portability 15%, lifecycle cost 15%, delivery and supplier capability 10%, flexibility and accessibility 10%, and exit feasibility 5%. Adjust the weights to the service’s risk; for a safety-critical system, security and resilience may outweigh feature breadth.
When is building software justified?
Build only when a clear strategic case survives comparison with reuse and products. Government guidance identifies a build case when the user need is unique or rare, supplier options are limited, available products cannot scale, adapt, or integrate to meet core requirements, or the organisation has the durable capability to own the full lifecycle.
Evidence for a genuine build case
- Distinctive mission: The service performs a function not reasonably available in the market or public sector.
- Essential control: Security, sovereignty, safety, or statutory obligations require control unavailable through products and contracts.
- Scale or change: Forecast volume, latency, geographic distribution, or policy change exceeds product limits.
- Interoperability: Products cannot meet mandatory open-interface, data-model, or workflow requirements.
- Capability: The organisation can retain product, engineering, security, service-management, and operations skills for the expected life.
Do not confuse a supplier with ownership
A buy-to-build specialist can deliver custom software through a procurement route, but the public body still needs internal product ownership, architecture oversight, security accountability, and funding for continuous improvement. A contract that ends at launch without an operating model leaves the organisation with an expensive asset and no reliable service.
How do build, buy, and reuse compare?
| Decision axis | Reuse | Buy | Build |
|---|---|---|---|
| User fit | Existing journeys may be close; validate gaps and context. | Strong for common needs when the product meets most requirements. | Strongest for genuinely unique mission needs. |
| Time to value | Often fastest when documentation, hosting, and ownership are sound. | Usually faster than bespoke delivery, subject to procurement and configuration. | Requires discovery, delivery, operation, and continuous improvement. |
| Cost profile | May reduce duplication, but integration, remediation, and contribution costs remain. | Include licence or subscription, implementation, configuration, integration, support, upgrades, and exit. | Include product teams, platforms, operations, security, maintenance, and retirement. |
| Control and flexibility | Depends on the owning team’s roadmap and governance. | Depends on contract terms, APIs, standards, and configuration limits. | Highest control, with highest responsibility. |
| Capability required | Ability to adopt, integrate, and operate another team’s solution. | Supplier-management, configuration, service-management, and product expertise. | Durable engineering, security, product, data, and operations capability. |
| Lock-in and exit | Shared dependencies can still create lock-in. | Assess switching effort, portability, contract terms, and supplier concentration. | Assess internal technology concentration and staff continuity. |
| Security and compliance | Revalidate controls in the new organisational context. | Contract for assurance, patching, incident response, and audit rights. | Fund and operate the complete security lifecycle. |
US federal guidance highlights performance, total lifecycle cost, security and privacy, interoperability, ability to share or reuse, resources required to switch vendors, and quality of support as selection factors. Use those factors as a cross-check rather than allowing a single price or feature score to decide.
How should we run the decision step by step?
- Define the mission need. Write the user journeys, measurable outcomes, constraints, data classes, service levels, expected demand, and retirement assumptions. Separate essential requirements from preferences.
- Map the current estate. List existing services, shared platforms, components, contracts, interfaces, data stores, skills, and technical debt. Identify duplicated capability and systems approaching renewal.
- Search for reuse. Contact owners, inspect documentation and code where available, and request evidence of security, accessibility, reliability, operating cost, roadmap, and support. Reject candidates only with recorded reasons.
- Run a fit and risk assessment. Test representative workflows and integrations. Score functional gaps, data migration, security controls, performance, accessibility, support, ownership, and exit difficulty.
- Test market products. Evaluate commercial and open-source options against the same requirements and weighted criteria. Distinguish configurable behaviour from changes that create a private fork.
- Challenge the requirement set. For every gap, ask whether law or mission outcomes require custom behaviour. Quantify the effect of changing the process to match a proven product.
- Build a should-cost model. Estimate each lifecycle cost for reuse, buy, build, and hybrid scenarios. Include ranges, timing, inflation assumptions, staffing, risk contingencies, and sensitivity to volume or contract length.
- Choose governance and contract protections. Name the product owner, allocate risks, specify data rights, APIs, documentation, security duties, service levels, audit rights, and exit assistance.
- Run a proportionate pilot. Use real user journeys and non-sensitive representative data. Set pass/fail criteria for usability, integration, performance, security, accessibility, and operational support.
- Reassess at decision gates. Review the choice at technology refresh, renewal, major upgrade, and end-of-contract points. Reuse and market conditions change; a previous decision is not a permanent exemption from comparison.
What belongs in total cost of ownership?
Compare costs over the same period and service volume. UK assessment guidance warns that purchase price alone omits in-life change and end-of-life exit and migration. Canada’s guidance similarly notes that open source is not completely free and that migration, transition, exit, and support belong in total cost of ownership.
| Lifecycle stage | Costs to include | Questions to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery and design | User research, architecture, privacy assessment, security threat modelling, accessibility design, and procurement support. | How much analysis is needed to make the option safe and viable? |
| Acquisition or creation | Licence or subscription, staff, supplier fees, hosting setup, environments, and contract management. | Are charges recurring, usage-based, inflation-linked, or tied to a minimum commitment? |
| Implementation | Configuration, customisation, integration, data cleansing, migration, testing, training, and change management. | Which assumptions depend on data quality or supplier availability? |
| Live operation | Hosting, support, monitoring, service desk, releases, backups, resilience, certificates, and observability. | Who operates the service at 02:00 during an incident? |
| Change and security | Policy changes, enhancements, vulnerability remediation, penetration testing, audits, patching, and re-certification. | What happens when an operating system, dependency, or regulation changes? |
| Transition and exit | Data export, interface replacement, retraining, parallel running, contract termination, decommissioning, records retention, and replacement procurement. | Can the organisation retrieve usable data and operate during a supplier or platform change? |
Use a discounted cash-flow model where appropriate, but show undiscounted totals as well. Present low, expected, and high cases for staffing, transaction volume, integration effort, and exit timing. A cheap first year can be the most expensive option if renewal increases, data is difficult to extract, or a private customisation blocks upgrades.
Is open source really cheaper?
Sometimes, but the licence price is only one line in the model. Open source can reduce duplicated effort, permit modification, and enable sharing. It can also require substantial spending on architecture, hardening, integration, documentation, support, and staff who understand the code.
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Checks before adopting an open-source project
- Licence fit: Confirm obligations for distribution, attribution, modifications, network use, and third-party components.
- Project maturity: Examine release history, adoption, maintainer activity, governance, issue response, and documented upgrade practices.
- Security practice: Verify vulnerability disclosure, patch timelines, dependency monitoring, signing, and the ability to produce a software bill of materials.
- Operational suitability: Test performance, scalability, resilience, observability, backup and restore, and support for required deployment environments.
- Interoperability: Prefer documented, open interfaces and machine-readable data formats.
- Support and warranty: Decide whether internal teams, a specialist provider, or a community will provide response targets, fixes, and assurance.
- Exit: Confirm that data and configuration can be exported and that another team could maintain or replace the solution.
GOV.UK guidance asks whether an open-source solution meets user needs, what its initial and ongoing costs are, whether training is required, how widely it is adopted, whether it is maintained, how secure and scalable it is, whether the licence fits, and whether support or a warranty is available. The DDaT Playbook sets an expectation that government software and code should be open source by default, while allowing exceptions when a defensible rationale exists. Open and interoperable software can improve documentation, maintenance, reuse, and overall programme cost, but “open by default” does not mean “adopt without due diligence.”
How do we avoid vendor or platform lock-in?
Lock-in is the cost and risk of changing supplier, platform, or internal technology. Address it before signing or building, not after the first renewal notice.
Contract and architecture protections
- Require documented, versioned APIs and open standards wherever practical.
- Define data ownership, export formats, export frequency, retention, and assistance with extraction.
- Set service-level measures for availability, response, restoration, patching, and incident notification.
- Obtain usable technical and operational documentation, including dependency and configuration records.
- Reserve source-code access, escrow, or step-in rights where failure of the supplier would threaten continuity.
- Limit proprietary extensions that cannot be reproduced by another provider.
- Require support for migration, testing, parallel operation, and staff training at exit.
- Track concentration risk when several critical services depend on the same supplier, cloud platform, framework, or scarce skill.
Test exit before it is urgent
Run a sample export and restore into an independent environment. Measure whether records, relationships, metadata, audit history, attachments, permissions, and reports remain usable. A contractual promise to export data is not enough if the format is undocumented or the organisation cannot interpret it.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What governance and procurement model supports a sound choice?
Bring commercial, technology, security, data, legal, finance, accessibility, and service-operations teams into the decision early. The purchasing strategy should state who owns the product after delivery, which risks sit with the public body or supplier, and how decisions will be revisited.
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- A user-need statement with measurable outcomes and service-level targets.
- An options appraisal covering reuse, buy, build, and any hybrid route.
- A requirements catalogue separating mandatory constraints from preferences.
- An architecture and interoperability assessment.
- A security, privacy, records, and accessibility assessment.
- A lifecycle cost model with assumptions, ranges, and sensitivity analysis.
- A capability and operating-model plan for product, engineering, support, and incident response.
- A contract and exit plan covering data, documentation, APIs, assurance, transition, and decommissioning.
- Decision records explaining rejected options and the evidence for the selected route.
Allocate each risk to the party best able to control it. A supplier may manage infrastructure availability, while the public body remains accountable for lawful processing, policy decisions, user outcomes, and data quality. Vague shared responsibility is a common cause of gaps during incidents and upgrades.
Can a hybrid option be better than a pure build, buy, or reuse choice?
Yes. A hybrid route can reuse a common identity or case-management platform, buy a specialist capability, and build only the thin integration or mission-specific workflow that no available option can provide. Evaluate the boundaries carefully: every interface becomes a dependency with its own security, monitoring, support, and exit cost.
Example decision pattern
Imagine a public agency launching a grants service. A shared identity service and notification component already meet security and accessibility needs. A commercial case-management product handles common application, approval, and audit workflows, while a small custom rules service implements a unique statutory eligibility calculation. The agency should document ownership for each component, test data exchange and failure recovery, and price replacement of the custom rules service separately from the product contract.
What common mistakes derail the comparison?
- Choosing by purchase price: Correct it with a lifecycle model that includes implementation, operations, change, migration, and retirement.
- Assuming reuse is free: Budget integration, remediation, support contributions, training, and the cost of relying on another owner’s roadmap.
- Over-customising a product: Challenge each divergence and prefer configuration that preserves upgrade paths.
- Calling a supplier-built system “owned”: Retain internal product, architecture, security, and service-management capability.
- Ignoring data portability: Demonstrate an export and restore, including metadata, audit trails, and attachments.
- Accepting undocumented open source: Assess maintainers, release practice, vulnerabilities, licence obligations, and support before adoption.
- Skipping refresh reviews: Reopen the appraisal at renewal, major upgrade, technology refresh, and end-of-contract points.
- Using untestable requirements: Convert preferences into measurable acceptance criteria tied to user and mission outcomes.
- Overlooking organisational capacity: Count scarce skills, retention, on-call coverage, training, and succession in every option.
What is a practical final decision checklist?
Approve an option only when the decision record answers each question below with evidence.
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- Which existing public-sector or open-source solutions were considered, and why were unsuitable ones rejected?
- Does the selected product meet most needs through configuration rather than private customisation?
- If building, what unique requirement, scale, integration, or control justifies it?
- What are the low, expected, and high lifecycle costs for the same period and demand?
- Who owns the product, data, security response, roadmap, and service after delivery?
- Can the service meet required security, privacy, accessibility, records, resilience, and performance obligations?
- Are APIs, data formats, documentation, source access, and exit assistance adequate?
- What skills and funding are needed for operation, upgrades, incident response, and retirement?
- When will the decision be reviewed, and what evidence would trigger a change?
The defensible outcome is the option that delivers the required public value with manageable risk across its whole life—not necessarily the option with the lowest initial price or the most custom control.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should a government software option be reassessed?
Reassess at renewal, major upgrade, technology refresh, and end-of-contract milestones. Also reopen the decision when the user need, threat environment, transaction volume, ownership, or market changes materially.
What evidence should a reuse candidate provide before approval?
Request current architecture and dependency documentation, security and accessibility evidence, operating costs, incident history, release cadence, roadmap, service-level performance, and a named support owner. Validate the evidence with a representative workflow and integration test.
What should a should-cost model do when estimates are uncertain?
Show low, expected, and high cases with explicit assumptions for staffing, volume, integration effort, inflation, and exit timing. Run sensitivity analysis so decision-makers can see which assumptions could reverse the preferred option.
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Yes, requirements for data export, documentation, migration assistance, parallel running, retraining, and decommissioning can be written into the contract. Specify formats, response times, pricing rules, and acceptance tests rather than relying on a general cooperation clause.
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