The Technology Code of Practice has quietly deleted the spend-control sentence this site tested in September, rather than correct it. The policy underneath it, still demanding sign-off above 100,000 pounds, has not been touched.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
In short. This site's 22 September 2026 teardown found that the Technology Code of Practice still told every department to route spending through "the Cabinet Office spend control process" and named the "GDS Assurance team" as the contact, nearly six months after HM Treasury's reform abolished most of that process [1]. The page's own change log now records a 29 October 2026 edit: "Major updates, including removing CDDO as a supporting organisation, removed references to spend controls, and implementation of new content structure" [1]. The sentence is gone, replaced with a vaguer instruction to "check with your department's assurance team" and a new link to the Digital Assurance Playbook, a document that has carried the correct, post-reform position since 1 April 2026 [2]. The policy page departments are actually told is the live, current one, "Digital and technology spend controls (version 5)", still states sign-off is "mandatory" above 100,000 pounds and has not been touched since 18 February 2025 [3]. Two documented mistakes: four stars.
This site tracks the Technology Code of Practice because every department is told to use it "for all of your technology projects and programmes" [1]. In September this site tested that instruction against HM Treasury's spend-controls reform and found a five-month gap: the Code still named a process that had mostly stopped applying. Thirty-eight days later, GOV.UK's own change-history log shows the Code was rewritten. This is the diff.
What changed, and what did not
Until 29 October 2026, the Technology Code of Practice read: "You must consider all points of the TCoP as part of the Cabinet Office spend control process. If your project or programme needs spend control approval you should contact the GDS Assurance team... for guidance with the approvals process" [4]. That sentence is no longer on the page. In its place, the live text now reads: "You should also check with your department's assurance team to confirm which TCoP points apply specifically to your own spending and assurance processes", followed by a new line: "For more information about managing digital and technology spending and assurance, see the Digital Assurance Playbook" [1]. The page's full change history records the edit under 29 October 2026, alongside the removal of the Central Digital and Data Office as a supporting organisation [1].
The Digital Assurance Playbook the Code now points to is not new. It was published 1 April 2026, the same day the reform took effect, and its own metadata shows no edit since [2]. It states plainly that "digital and technology spend controls are being removed and replaced with a more devolved approach", and sets out the new mechanism: initiatives above a 5 million pound whole-life-cost threshold go into a pipeline for organisation-led assurance, rather than a fixed per-project sign-off [2]. Had the Technology Code of Practice linked to this document when it was published, or at any point in the following six months, the gap this site found in September would not have existed. It took until the day after this site's teardown had been live for five weeks.
What the edit does not touch is the document departments are actually directed to for the figures themselves. "Digital and technology spend controls (version 5)" is still the live page, unedited since 18 February 2025, five weeks before the reform report that overtook it was even published [3]. It still states in full: "It is mandatory to assure all non-BAU spend above 100,000 pounds for digital and 1 million pounds for technology through your assurance boards" [3]. A newer edition, "version 6", still tells readers not to use it: "Use version 5 of the digital and technology spend controls policy until GDS has told you to use this version" [5]. And the separate guidance on setting up a spend pipeline still instructs organisations to "create and maintain pipelines... to follow the current versions of the commercial and digital and technology spend controls processes", linking straight through to the unrevised version 5 as that current version [6]. None of the three has been edited since this site's September teardown, or since 29 October's change to the Code.
The claims, tested
| The document's own words | What the record actually shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Until 29 October 2026, the Technology Code of Practice: "You must consider all points of the TCoP as part of the Cabinet Office spend control process... contact the GDS Assurance team... for guidance with the approvals process" [4] | The live page now reads only: "You should also check with your department's assurance team to confirm which TCoP points apply specifically to your own spending and assurance processes", no process named, no team named [1] | The specific, actionable, wrong instruction was deleted rather than replaced with a specific, actionable, correct one. A reader following only the Code now has less operational detail than before, not more |
| Technology Code of Practice, 29 October 2026: "For more information about managing digital and technology spending and assurance, see the Digital Assurance Playbook" [1] | The Digital Assurance Playbook has stated since 1 April 2026 that "digital and technology spend controls are being removed and replaced with a more devolved approach", with a new 5 million pound pipeline threshold [2] | The correct document existed for the entire period this site's teardown covered. The Code was not missing information to link to; it simply had not linked to it |
| "Digital and technology spend controls (version 5)", unedited since 18 February 2025: "It is mandatory to assure all non-BAU spend above 100,000 pounds for digital and 1 million pounds for technology through your assurance boards" [3] | The Digital Assurance Playbook it sits alongside on GOV.UK says the opposite: spend controls "are being removed" [2] | Two live, current-dated GOV.UK pages on the same subject state opposite things about whether a process still exists. Version 5 carries no caveat, no supersession notice and no link to the Playbook |
The mistakes, counted
The fix removes wrong information without adding correct information (1). The deleted sentence named a specific process and a specific contact point, both wrong. The replacement names neither; it defers to an undefined "department's assurance team" with no indication of what that team should be checking against. A department reading only the Code, before or after 29 October, could not use it alone to find out what its actual spend threshold is. Before the edit, at least the Code pointed, wrongly, to somewhere. The new link to the Digital Assurance Playbook fixes that for anyone who follows it, but the sentence carrying the link does not say the thresholds changed, only that assurance teams should be consulted, which is true of almost any policy and tells a reader nothing about this one.
The live policy page departments are told is current still states the old regime as mandatory law (2). "Digital and technology spend controls (version 5)" is not an archived or superseded document; GOV.UK's own version 6 tells readers to keep using it [5], and the pipeline-setup guidance links to it as the current process [6]. It has not been edited in the five weeks since this site named it, or in the seven months since the reform it contradicts. Anyone who reaches it directly, by search, by bookmark, or by following the still-live pipeline guidance, reads a mandatory 100,000 pound threshold that the Cabinet Office's own Digital Assurance Playbook says no longer applies.
Credit where due
The Technology Code of Practice edit is not nothing. GOV.UK's change-history log names what changed and when, rather than folding the rewrite into a routine-sounding republish, the same standard of honesty this site credited the Commercial spend controls page for in September [1]. The new link to the Digital Assurance Playbook is the correct document, not a dead end or a generic landing page, and for a reader who clicks through, it gives an accurate, specific account of the new regime, including the 5 million pound pipeline threshold [2]. Deleting a wrong instruction is better than leaving it live indefinitely.
Verdict
Four stars, from two documented mistakes. The Technology Code of Practice no longer repeats the error this site found in September, which is real progress, five weeks late. But the edit treats the symptom on the page easiest to reach from a search engine and leaves the underlying diagnosis exactly where it was: the policy document actually named as current, "Digital and technology spend controls (version 5)", still states a mandatory sign-off threshold that the government's own Digital Assurance Playbook has said for seven months no longer exists. Deleting the pointer to a wrong answer is not the same as correcting the wrong answer itself, and the wrong answer is still the one page in this chain that GOV.UK calls current. This document is tracked in the Daily Register; a further revision will get a diff entry.
Sources
- The Technology Code of Practice, GOV.UK guidance, Government Digital Service, published 14 July 2021, last updated 29 October 2026
- Digital Assurance Playbook, GOV.UK publication, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, published 1 April 2026
- Digital and technology spend controls (version 5), GOV.UK guidance, Cabinet Office, last updated 18 February 2025
- The Cabinet Office abolished most of its spend controls on 1 April 2026 and rewrote its commercial guidance to say so the same day. It never touched the sibling guidance for technology spending, which still calls central sign-off mandatory above 100,000 pounds, Tracked Changes, 22 September 2026
- Digital and technology spend control (version 6), GOV.UK publication, Cabinet Office, published 23 February 2024, last updated 10 October 2025
- Set up a commercial or digital and technology spend controls pipeline, GOV.UK guidance, Cabinet Office, published 30 April 2018, last updated 18 February 2025