Every page on this site that addresses Vendor Dependency as part of its analysis. Pages can sit anywhere in the structure — feedback loops, system traps, interventions, or reference material — and may treat the concept centrally or as a supporting mechanism. Read in any order.
To see all concepts at once, go to the concepts hub.
- Once for Wales: An Antipattern Once for Wales is the policy framing that justifies DHCW's monopoly on digital delivery for NHS Wales. In software-engineering language, it is an antipattern — a popular structural choice that looks like the obvious answer but reliably produces the failure modes it was supposed to prevent. Denmark, Estonia, and NHS Digital England examined the same model and explicitly rejected it. Wales is the exception, not the default.
- The Vendor Dependency Spiral DHCW manages a contract portfolio valued at roughly £1.25 billion. With each outsourced programme, internal capability erodes and vendor leverage grows.
- Shifting the Burden Hire instead of fixing process. Outsource instead of building capability. Rebrand instead of learning. And the ultimate burden-shift: dismiss the person who identified the problem.
- Intervention 4: Flip the Model Embed DHCW teams in health boards under clinical leadership. Recruit externally. Give embedded teams authority to bypass national mandates when clinicians need something faster.