Warren Smith (he/him)

Warren has almost 30 years experience across private and public sectors, leading transformative projects to introduce new ways of thinking and working in procurement. He joined the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) in 2012, with responsibility for ensuring the UK government’s Digital Marketplace directly supported digital transformation. He introduced user-centred, design-led, data-driven and open approaches to public contracting – the foundational step-change in procurement envisioned in the UK Government Transformation Strategy. Between 2018-2021, Warren led the GDS Global Digital Marketplace Programme, helping emerging economies make their public procurement more transparent, improve systems that govern public spending, improve scrutiny through better quality open data, and build institutional capability and capacity to ensure sustainable change. In addition to co-leading the U4SSC Thematic Group on ‘Procurement for Smart Sustainable Cities’ and 'Intergenerational Procurement for People-Centred Cities', Warren has also led a Thematic Group of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Working Party of Senior Digital Government Officials, focused on ‘GovTech Commissioning’, supported the OECD Working Party of Leading Practitioners on Public Procurement as a peer reviewer, and contributed to the development of the OECD ‘Integrating Responsible Business Conduct in Public Procurement’ report. Warren is Founder and Principal Consultant at Dangersmith SARL, and now operates through Posterity Global.